Scholar Speaks on Black History

By Melody Gustafson
EAST LIVERPOOL – In the Slak Shak last night, guest speaker Edmund Timothy Moore, MFA, delivered his presentation of “What We All Need to Know” about Black History Month to an audience of students, professors and faculty.

Introduced by Dr. Roxanne Burns from the biology department, Moore began with a quote from Carter Goodwin Woodson, author of “The Miseducation of the Negro” and a member of the black Psi Phi Fraternity at Howard University. Woodson and the fraternity started the celebration of Negro History Week in Nashville, Tennessee in 1926.

The second week of February is the shared birth week of two prominent historical figures who affected the lives of black Americans: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. This is why it was chosen for the Negro History Week celebrations.

Not until 1976, after the civil rights movement pressure effected it, did Negro History Week expand into the Black History Month that we all know today. Canada also nationally celebrates it in February and the United Kingdom does in October.

“We should emphasize not Negro history, but the Negro in history,” read Moore from his slideshow. He pointed out that American history lacks a full account of the black experience, although it is a part of a human story that everyone should share.

The racial categorization of people into groups based on physical characteristics is madness, explained Moore. Someone, somewhere, hundreds of years ago, categorized humans, elevating some groups and denigrating others. “There is one human race that is diverse,” he emphasized. People need to question their inherited terminology of race, but he pointed out that very few people think for themselves. He called the entire concept of race a “mythunderstanding.”

Moore brushed over a great deal of valuable knowledge that is not commonly known about prominent blacks throughout history. He discussed the three black popes and the first female black millionaire, Madam C.J. Walker, who invented and marketed hair-care products to African-American women in the early 20th century.

E. Timothy Moore is an Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and an Associate Professor in the Department of Pan African Studies at Kent State University. He was also the art director for the Pan African Department and Cultural Center from 1976-98 and curator of the Center of Pan African Culture’s Uumbaji Gallery at KSU from 1974-98.