What Black History Means to Me

We asked our employees to share their thoughts about Black History Month (BHM) and as this month concludes, it is only fitting that I share mine.

It’s Special: BHM, as with all heritage celebration months, is special. We try to acknowledge and honor the contributions each culture has made to this nation everyday…and like anniversaries, birthdays and other occasions, we carve out a specific time to truly recognize, honor and celebrate. It is empowering to understand how one’s culture fits into the fabric of our larger society. This is still relevant in 2019 because there still remains instrumental, influential and institutional narratives that either directly omit or swiftly gloss over significant contributions made by non-white citizens. As a result, mainstream looses out on understanding the major contributions that we all benefit from. So, until these narratives are changed whole scale…we take a moment to uncover and recognize what has been hidden in plain sight.

BHM helps me to appreciate just how much the Black experience is part of the untold American story. So many unsung innovative trailblazers, like Benjamin Banneker, who was single handedly responsible for the blueprint of our Nation’s capital. Or Crispus Attucks, one of the very first Americans to sacrifice himself during the Revolutionary War. Or Black women who served as valuable spies in many wars like Harriet Tubman and Josephine Baker. We rarely hear about these stories unless we intentionally search. Then there are the countless medical, scientific and technological contributions made by Black Americans like the traffic light and the first successful open heart surgery. It is important, particularly for our youth, to understand there is a significant place in history for contributions made by Black people in this country and in a broader sense, the vast historical context of Black people before slavery in the Americas. This knowledge helps dismantle crippling stereotypes that are well and alive today.

It’s Personal: I use BHM to reflect on all who came before me, both well-known historical figures and prior generations of my own family such as my grandmother Lizzie Diggs, who this month, passed away seven years ago. I know that I literally stand on her shoulders and the shoulders of other elders of her generation and many generations before hers. The life I live is a full manifestation of the life they were only allowed to dream about. I know that I am the realization of my ancestors’ wildest dreams.

The picture you see shows my grandmother’s grandfather, William (Billy) Jackson, who was an Ashkenazi Jew and to his left, his wife his Eliza who was both Black and Native American. I mention their ethnicity because, while rarely discussed, all of these identities are very much part of the Black American story. Two of their sons are sitting in the first row, my great-great uncles, who were Pullman Porters, which has its own deep and rich chapter of the American chronicle. I often wonder what their lives would have been like, had they had access to a solid education, suitable living conditions and decent health care. I wonder what my grandmother could have done, had she had access, because she accomplished so much, with so little. She was a strong, creative, talented and resilient woman. Due to segregation laws during her childhood, she only received a third-grade education, and she worked tobacco fields in the Florida heat to help ensure that her family could put food on the table. Being Black and poor in the rural south was tough. Segregation, Jim Crow and other laws limiting essential resources like education, food and medical care to Black people during this time created a degrading and diabolically violent environment for Blacks in the rural south. And, like many others, my family was not immune to this reality. In time, my grandmother married my grandfather, Freddie Diggs. After years of enduring those harsh realities and after surviving brutality, my grandfather had a mental breakdown and was sent to a mental institution notorious for experimenting on Black and poor people.

So my grandmother took what she learned from each one pictured above and carried on, now with her own family. She leaned on her very spiritual foundation and raised her five young children. Though impoverished, she managed many jobs, including entrepreneurship, becoming a seamstress and the owner of the first Black-owned business in her small and segregated town. She could sew anything… from wedding gowns to my first fanny pack (once I came on the scene)! Her example empowered her own children, including my aunts, uncles and my father, to lead productive lives and build successful careers. My father, a highly-trained Air Force veteran who served for over 20 years as an Air Traffic Controller, showed me first-hand the results of hard work and dedication to family. His example, and those from his generation of my family, helped me become the first college graduate in our family. Not because I’m smarter, but because I had access to the resources to fulfill dreams that prior generations of my family had been denied. I had access to primary and secondary schools free from substandard resources, I had access to decent healthcare to help me grow strong and parents who helped me gain exposure to the right individuals that could help me successfully navigate college admissions. Access made the difference for my career and my life and I know I did not make that happen on my own. My story is possible because of my family and the well-known historical figures that refused to accept the limits and broken narrative that people in power created and tried to assign to them.

Black History Month reminds us to tell and believe in our own story and reminds us that while the history of Black people is a part of the American story, it is not the story we are most often told about who we are, how we contributed, and what we can achieve. It is now my job to pay it forward so that with each generation, we get better and our true history survives, our narratives get stronger, and America’s history becomes richer with accuracy. I use this month to celebrate those before me just a few generations ago, appreciate their sacrifice and think about ways to help those today, who may not know the richness and value of Black history in America’s history. If they are like me, this knowledge can inspire them! Inspiration coupled with access will enable the next generations to reach all of their hopes and dreams. Theirs may be the contribution that engineers the next national monument for equity, or the next counter-intelligence revelation, or the first solution for true equity and equality in America’s history. Who knows, the possibilities are endless!