PROVO, Utah — Celebrating Black History Month
each February should mean more than just remembering Rosa Parks or
reciting Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
While heroes of the civil rights movement deserve to be honored,
they don't provide a full picture of the role of African-Americans
played in shaping American society, said Howard Dodson Jr., chief of
the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York
Public Library, during a forum address Tuesday at BYU.
That role began in the Colonial period, between 1492 and 1776, when
6.5 million people crossed the Atlantic and settled in the "New World,"
including North, Central and South America; and the Caribbean. Yet only
1 million of those pioneers were Europeans, Dodson explained. The other
5.5 million were Africans.
"The story of their active roles in the making of the U.S. and the
Americas needs to be better-known and celebrated," he said. "Black
history, African-American history is American history. When we
celebrate black history, we do so knowing that we're also celebrating
American history."
But as America celebrates Black History Month and for future Martin
Luther King Jr. days, Dodson encouraged the students to avoid thinking
of King's famous speech as the sum total of his legacy.
Rather, Dodson said he believes that from the 1963 March on
Washington until the end of King's life in 1968, King became a more
profound thinker and activist, with a key belief being: "Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
As evidence to that, when King was killed in Memphis, he had gone
down to support the garbage workers' strike and their fight for
economic justice.
King understood that the United States' problems could not be solved
without a radical redistribution of economic and political power,
Dodson said.
"If that's not a message for the 21st century, I don't know what
is," he said, receiving spontaneous applause and a few "amens" from the
audience.
BYU student James Carroll said he appreciated the new insight from
the forum and wanted to reread an article he had printed from Wikipedia
about Martin Luther King Jr., looking to see if it captured the
feelings of King from 1963 to 1968 as explained by Dodson.
"I need to go reread it, see what's changed, contribute and make it better," Carroll said of the online article.
In his address, Dodson also praised The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints for its presence in Harlem, considered to be the
cultural capital of black America.
"When I heard (the LDS chapel) was ...a mere seven blocks from the
Schomburg Center on Malcolm X Boulevard in the center of Harlem, I was
surprised," Dodson said, and the audience laughed. "No, quite frankly,
I was stunned. I had never imagined that the church would ever consider
taking up residence in Harlem.
"That you had the courage to do so," he continued, "and (your)
growing presence there is a tribute to your sense of mission and to
your willingness to welcome all of God's children into your fold."
E-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com