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43 Viewing Negro History Week I can see the speakers everywhere squaring off for annual Brotherhood week and big preparations being made for banquets on the special occasion of Negro History Week.* I’ll always remember my school days when on this week there would be much preparation, just as there is for Christmas. This was the only time I had an opportunity to really find out about Negro people, their accomplishments, and their struggles for recognition of their human dignity. But somehow, after this week I never noticed any change in Negro and white relations. Every year at the school, there would be two or more speakers who were invited to speak on Negro history that week, generally one was a Negro and one was white. Each speaker would go back into history and pick out some Negro figure and praise him to us. Most of the time it was Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver, the scientist. Always, I would feel very proud when they talked about their accomplishments but I would be very confused when it was all over. Always, they would talk about him or her from the standpoint of their personal behavior and this I was much upset over. Disproving a Myth The same thing happened to me in later life in relation to Joe Louis. I had a swelling pride in him as a fighter, especially when he was in the ring fighting a white. I would be so nervous, I would be trembling until the fight was over. I felt proud of him for he was a Negro and he was disproving everything that was said about Negroes’ inability to do things and proving Negroes were equal to all in every way. But whenever he was talked about by white society for what he meant to Negroes, they always talked about his role in relation to Negro behavior and that he advanced his race from his personal conduct. His personal conduct I never cared for. He had a “place.” I never wanted to think I had a “place.” Negroes detest the idea that they have a “place.” Capitalist society has a standard policy to never mention any Negroes who do not accept its idea that they have a “place.” To me a Negro’s “place” is any place. * Negro History Week was founded in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson. It is now Black History Month. Brotherhood Week was sponsored by an interfaith organization called the National Conference for Community and Justice (formerly the National Conference of Christians and Jews). Both took place during February. —Ed. Ward.indb 43 12/21/10 9:27 AM Part I 44 I am proud of Negro History Week and what it is supposed to represent. It is the corrupt way of white society that I detest, which uses certain Negroes to portray what they would like Negroes to be.* [ February 20, 1954 ] * Next to this column was an editorial titled “On Negro History” that criticizes both “the Communist and official American versions of Negro history.” It ends by saying “We are taking this opportunity of Negro HistoryWeek to start as a regular feature of this page the real history of the Negro people.” (Emphasis in original.) Also on this page was a box titled “Negro History” with an article on Crispus Attucks, the black man who escaped from slavery and fought and died at the Boston Massacre. —Ed. Ward.indb 44 12/21/10 9:27 AM ...

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