Black History Month
Black History Learned, Not Lived:
SEQ Kids And Parents Living
In A Post-Civil Rights Era

By SHAMS TAREK

Last week, the PRESS took a look at seniors and what they think about black history and the month that celebrates it.

The six men and women from the Allen Senior Center, ranging in age from 64 to 83, talked about black history from the most personal of perspectives—they lived it themselves.

Despite giving first-hand accounts of segregation in the south, race riots, discrimination and the March on Washington, the seniors said one of the saddest realities of this month is that today’s kids don’t know much about black history.  Wavering interests, combined with apathetic parents and teachers, they say, are to blame.

The lack of racial tension and subsequent activism in Southeast Queens means today’s parents and teachers don’t understand the importance of the civil rights movement and black history, and children are suffering for it, the seniors said.

“We’re in a whole new era,” said 70-year-old Earl Smith.  “The blacks don’t want to know about black history.  They want to learn how to use a computer.”

Members of the Thompson family browse through black history books at the Central Library in Jamaica, which they visit once a month.

Smith doesn’t have any kids of his own, but by his tally has 26 nieces and nephews who have a total of 115 children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of their own.  He says he knows a thing or two about black kids today.

“If they’re not into computers, they’re into rap,” Smith said, complaining about the careerism and hedonism that is so prevalent in youth culture today.  “They don’t even want to know about Iraq.  They just want to know about what they can do to do better for themselves.”

Shirley Foy, 71, said she learned more black history from her junior-high-school-educated mother than from her schools.  She said she continued the tradition with her own kids by talking to them and cutting out articles from black publications like The Amsterdam News.

Jaqueline Edmond, a 64-year-old who moved to South Ozone Park from Washington Heights in 1957, said that “As far as I can see the children aren’t learning about black history.  They’re not taught at home, and there’s not enough teaching about it in the schools.”  She said that teachers need more training and flexibility to be able to teach it.

Shindin Thompson, a 33-year-old mother of four who went to Jamaica public schools and still lives in the area, pretty much agrees with the Allen seniors.

Some of her friends and acquaintances “don’t pay too much attention to black history,” she said recently.  It’s an attitude that she says prevails among her generation and its children, who since the 1970s all grew up with heroic images of confident, successful blacks through television, film and music.

“I can see their point,” Thompson said about the seniors and their perception of an apathetic black population.  “I can see how they feel that way.  A lot of kids forget what people did to get where we are now.”

But Thompson, who gave each of her kids Swahili names and admits qualifying for the term “Afrocentric,” said that there are a lot of people, like herself, who make it a point to infuse black history and culture into their lives.

“I respect seniors a lot,” Thompson said.  “[But] a lot of times they look at the younger generation and they don’t give them chances.  Given the chance, I believe a lot of them will want to learn more about black history.”

Thompson, who takes her kids to Jamaica’s Central Library at least once a month, said that “times have changed” since her parents were young, in way that’s not conducive to learning black history.

Like many young couples, she and her husband both work, she said, making it hard for them to teach their kids about history and culture.

There’s also the fact that today’s kids are born into a society in which blacks are widely respected and have made roads into the highest reaches of influence and wealth.

The problem is especially strong—and ironic—in Southeast Queens, where many of America’s most prominent blacks lived and where being black is more of a boon than a burden.  With past neighbors like Basie, Ellington, Coltrane, Powell, Simmons, Roker and Cool J., who’s worried about the struggles of black people?  In Southeast Queens, it’s nothing special for black people to shine.

Despite the overriding apathy among black kids and their parents regarding black history, Thompson and her family are a shining exception.

The PRESS bumped into Thompson and three of her children—12-year-old runner Imaira, whose name means ‘faith,’ was in Indiana for a track meet—at the Central Library recently.  The kids were reveling over some books on prominent blacks in the children’s room.

The waist-high kids surrounded their mom, who led them about the room like a busy schoolteacher.

“Mom, here’s a book about black history!” said an excited Anasia, 6, whose name means ‘princess.’

Anasia’s seven-year-old brother Ahidi, whose name means ‘one with greatness,’ and 11-year old brother Akili, whose name means ‘one with understanding,’ joined Anasia in groping at all the books.  Grabbing ones they like before looking at the ones already in their hands, they seemed to be in black history heaven.  The Allen seniors would probably have shed tears.

“It’s very important,” Thompson said of her kids’ learning about black history.  “I just really feel that black children need to know about their ancestors and their contributions to society.  We know about what everyone else has done.”

Learning about black history, Thompson said, is not just a black thing.

“I’m raising these children to be out there in the world and be leaders,” Thompson said.  “It’s a long road for them out there today.”

Thompson also said that Black History Month—which some people criticize as a token observance during the shortest month of the year—is a great opportunity to learn about black history, even for people like her who think about it all year long.

“Black History Month is an excellent time to get the most out of it,” Thompson said of learning black history.  “There’s a lot of extra attention paid to it now.”

Thompson’s grandparents died when she was very young; she was on her own in terms of first-hand accounts of early blacks in America.  Like many of today’s young people who have a good understanding of black history, Thompson got lucky with “this one teacher” from M.S. 72 who opened up the past for her.

“I first started learning about black history by my parents,” Thompson said.  “It wasn’t taught as much in school.  [But] a history teacher at junior high school happened to be black.  She just went into it.”

The lucky arrangement in Thompson’s life mirrors what many of the Allen seniors told the PRESS about learning black history in the schools.  When they were growing up, they said, school curricula didn’t put much emphasis on black history (one senior even noted that history books with black people in them had those pages torn out by teachers).  It always took special teachers with their own special interests, they said, to learn black history in school

Later on, increasing media coverage and Afrocentric movies like “Roots” revealed more about black history to a generation of young people who never sang civil rights anthems like “Give Peace a Chance” or “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

“It came as a shock to me,” Thompson said of the pop culture attention, “because we weren’t seeing it that way.  We weren’t taught that way.”