Ship of Fools: Black History Month

Thread: Black History Month Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Rosalind (# 317) on :

I have never celebrated Black History Month before but want to plan some activities with my students. Plus I want it to have a local flavour (Nelson Mandela visited our town once). What else would be good to celebrate?

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Rosalind:
I have never celebrated Black History Month before but want to plan some activities with my students. Plus I want it to have a local flavour (Nelson Mandela visited our town once). What else would be good to celebrate?

You could start here. And here.
Some resources here as well.

Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :

I'm not sure Mandela having visited your town once would really be a local flavour - contributions to your area's history by local black people is surely a better idea? But yes, the official UK BHM links are the best place to start.

Posted by Rosalind (# 317) on :

Thanks for that - I hadn't seen the Scottish resources before and they have some good links.
Mandela's visit was a big event locally - he came to unveil a plaque and it was a big event with singing and drumming and lots of local people remember him coming which is why I want to include it. I have contacted some local groups and I hope that now it's the weekend I shall get some replies.

Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :

That's not what I mean. The point of BHM is to celebrate black contributions to British history and culture - celebrating local black people's lives seems more appropriate than a Mandela visit, as momentous as that may have been.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
That's not what I mean. The point of BHM is to celebrate black contributions to British history and culture - celebrating local black people's lives seems more appropriate than a Mandela visit, as momentous as that may have been.

Just don't do it this way.

(Personally, I'm very skeptical of the "local history" thing - perhaps because I moved around as a child, so there was nothing special to me about "my local area". More significant contributions to the country as a whole would have more meaning to me.)

[ 25. September 2015, 23:20: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
The point of BHM is to celebrate black contributions to British history and culture - celebrating local black people's lives seems more appropriate than a Mandela visit, as momentous as that may have been.

Yes, that's what I was thinking. Historical figures do make an appearance, but there's usually an attempt to uncover unknown stories. Mandela was and is very well known.

But I suppose it partly depends on who this particular event or project is for. If these are quite young 'students' who know nothing about Mandela as an important historical figure, then a focus on him is certainly worthwhile.

However, if the event is meant to draw in or be of interest to the wider community, particularly a multicultural community, then a focus on Mandela alone will be inadequate. If you're not careful it might look as if Mandela has been chosen for insidious reasons, namely as an easy way of avoiding an exploration of the (problematic?) history and present of the kinds of BME people who actually live in the area.

[ 25. September 2015, 23:40: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock might be worth celebrating, and she has links with the OU at Milton Keynes.

When we did BHM at school, the Art Coordinator had set up twelve themes for displays outside classrooms, including sport, music, people like Mandela and Martin Luther King, and I can't recall the rest, but they were all usual suspects. She may have split sports into athletics, football and so on. So I suggested science, and had a terrible time once I'd got George Washington Carver, as in this country, very few black people seem to have had the opportunities for education available to freed slaves in the States, where they got involved in science even before they got their liberty. Dr Aderin-Pocock would have been a gift.

[ 26. September 2015, 16:31: Message edited by: Penny S ]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

I saw a TV program about computers years ago that said the first search-engine was made by a black man. He had been born in the Caribbean and immigrated to Canada when he was five years old.

Unfortunately I can't remember his name.

Moo

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Moo: I saw a TV program about computers years ago that said the first search-engine was made by a black man. He had been born in the Caribbean and immigrated to Canada when he was five years old.

Unfortunately I can't remember his name.

Alan Emtage

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

Writers? Malorie Blackman is British.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

Since it's a whole month, it certainly isn't all-or-nothing. If you haven't touched on the Mandela visit yet (since I see BHM is October over there), you might think of how to use it as a link between more local and national histories and movements. Think in concentric circles, maybe. It's good to include both the known and unknown stories, as long as the unknown and local aren't left out or forgotten. The mix helps to build a better contextual reading of local, national, and international stories and cultural expressions.

And it might impress the kids that Mandela came "here." Not everyone's town gets that honor, so it's worth recounting how special it made everyone feel (which highlights that people of all races and backgrounds look up to him, a Black man, and admire him for his work in racial justice) as well as the reason for his coming. If he was unveiling a plaque, what was the plaque about? That could bridge to local stories and histories.

One of MLK's themes was that the same struggle African-Americans were going through was actually an international struggle. He saw the importance of making those connections. Being part of an international movement raised the profile of local movements. What Mandela represented/represents in South Africa has a ripple effect throughout the globe. And it's important, I think, for Black children to see what an international hero a Black man can be.

"Think globally; act locally" might be another way to approach the project. So using big stories to frame the smaller histories, and smaller stories to illustrate the larger histories, that sort of thing.

You can also think in terms of everyday things that improve our lives that were invented or developed by Black men and women, no matter where in the globe they lived. Their work impacts people's lives, and that's local too, in a way. Not to detract from actual local stories, mind you. Just more of that balancing and interweaving to show how we're all connected.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I was surprised to find, long after I had left my college, that in our Freshers' week get to know the area introduction no-one had thought fit to tell us that Paul Robeson had sung to the people of Clacton from the balcony above the front door (when it was a hotel, not a college).

He's well worth looking up because of what he did as well as singing. He was very well respected in the mining areas of Wales because of his politics - which is why he was over here.

I heard an interview over the weekend with a Jamaican singer, Alan Wilmot - The Southlanders - who had been over here, like many of his countrymen, in the RAF during the war. He had a couple of interesting points about how Jamaicans were treated here during the war and after, when ex-servicemen were welcomed by the government. There were differences, both between the way the British and the visiting white Americans treated them during the war, and the way the British treated them during and after the war.

I think it was on Saturday Live, but I was struck by it. I got angry. I knew that US services had tried to "civilise" us in the way we treated their black troops, but when it came to interfering in the way we treated ours it was crossing a line.

Posted by Josiah Crawley (# 18481) on :

Martin Luther King
Rosa Parkes

seem good examples of Christians who were black who should be honored too.
Are there others for you who stand out for their Christian witness?

Posted by ArachnidinElmet (# 17346) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I was surprised to find, long after I had left my college, that in our Freshers' week get to know the area introduction no-one had thought fit to tell us that Paul Robeson had sung to the people of Clacton from the balcony above the front door (when it was a hotel, not a college).

He's well worth looking up because of what he did as well as singing. He was very well respected in the mining areas of Wales because of his politics - which is why he was over here.

Indeed. I used to work in a music library. Several sons of miners had met Paul Robeson when children on his union-supporting tours and had never forgotten the experience. His biography was never on the shelves.

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