The 2002 UNMC/NHS celebration of national Black History Awareness Month will feature a return engagement by jazz musician Preston Love. In addition, there will be an art exhibit in the McGoogan Library, a presentation on minority health disparities and a soul food day in the Nebraska Cafe.
The monthly line-up, organized by the NHS/UNMC Employee Diversity Network (EDN), is as follows:
- Feb. 11-28 — Patty Talbert will display her colorful batiks and paintings of African and African-American influence in the Linder Lounge of the McGoogan Library. Talbert has taken the centuries old, labor-intensive stamp block process of building colors and patterns into fabric and expanded the concept to easel painting on stretched canvass. There also will be some surprising art pieces on display.
- Wednesday, Feb. 20 — Jazz and rhythm and blues master Preston Love and a five-piece band will perform at 3 p.m. in the Eppley Science Hall. Love has more than 60 years of professional musicianship as sideman and leader in both internationally known bands and recording studio backup bands.
- Wednesday, Feb. 20 РThe Nebraska Caf̩ in University Hospital will feature a soul food menu of barbecue ribs, baked beans, corn on the cob, cornbread and sweet potato pie.
- Wednesday, Feb. 27 – Marilyn McGary will address a lunch and learn audience on the topic of “100% Access – 0% Disparities: Embracing the Challenge.”
The noon presentation will be in the Lower Storz Pavilion. McGary was recently appointed administrator of Women’s Community Health Center at Creighton University. She is a registered nurse, wife, mother, mentor, and ordained minister with more than 20 years experience in health-care administration and management. She has a bachelor’s degree of science in nursing and a master’s degree of science in health-care administration. Before joining Creighton, she served four years as director of operations and then director of development at Omaha’s Charles Drew Health Center.
During February, UNMC Today will post vignettes on African-Americans who have influenced the medical field. The annual observance of Black History Month is designed to encourage individuals to read more of the historical literature about African-Americans.
The development of African-American historical literature
The development of scholarly African-American historical texts was a long, slow, painstaking process. Although blacks came to America as slaves in 1619, there were only 18 African-Americans with doctoral degrees in history by 1940. Even today, people are fascinated and surprised by African-American history and are often left wondering: “Why hasn’t anyone told these stories before?” and “Why did textbooks ignore so many great tales about the black experience?”
The fact is, as explained by James and Lois Horton in “Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of the African-American,” black history was mostly passed down orally for the first 300 years. It was intermixed with written petitions to the government, in autobiographical narratives, in poetry and song and in dance and religious ceremonies. It wasn’t until 1827 that James Pennington, a slave blacksmith and carpenter who taught himself to read and write, wrote a general African-American history book titled “A Textbook of the Origin and History of Colored People.” In the 1850’s, William Cooper Nell wrote two history books detailing the role of blacks in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. Then, in 1863, William Wells Brown published “The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius and His Achievements.”
In 1882, George Washington Williams published a landmark book, “History of the Negro Race in America.” To prevent his account of the role and accomplishments of African-Americans from being dismissed as propaganda or wishful thinking, Washington documented everything in his book with extensive footnotes. His level of scholarship raised the bar for future black historians and set a standard that has never been lowered.
In 1912, Carter G. Woodson, the son of a former slave, earned a doctorate in history at Harvard University, and three years later organized the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and established the “Journal of Negro History.” Many of the 20th century’s greatest African-American historians obtained their first published papers through Woodson’s journal. His association eventually led the movement that resulted in a presidential declaration of National Negro History Week in February 1925 – now observed as National Black History Month.
For more information about campus Black History Month activities, contact EDN co-chairpersons Linda Cunningham at 559-2156 or Mike Browne at 552-3342.