Richness of black history shouldn't be segregated into one month

By Joyce King

DALLAS – It happens every February. People who are passionate about the black experience are pressed into a whirlwind schedule that ends as quickly as it begins, some 28 days later. Welcome, we are told, to Black History Month.
While I love the heightened awareness of being African-American that comes for one brief month, how I wish this feeling of inclusiveness extended to March, May, September, through December. Each year I vow to do something to change the thinking about a concept that started with historian Carter G. Woodson as Negro History Week. Isn't it time Black History Month (BHM) continued its evolution into a year-round celebration to ensure that any indifferent citizens can begin to understand that what we teach, preach, lecture, and conjecture about is really American history?

My tiny way of making a difference is to work hard to ensure that the teaching of black history does not wrap on the last day of February. Countless others are committed to the same, but can always use the company of people of all colors who would like to see children educated honestly about painful things that some believe better left in an unacknowledged past. But it was Martin Luther King Jr. who once said, "Truth crushed to earth will rise again."