CONTEMPORARY HEROES AND HEROINES DAY



CULTURAL RESOURCES

Sunday, February 24, 2008

William H. Wiggins, Jr., Lectionary Team Cultural Resource Commentator

Lection - Isaiah 42:1-7 (New Revised Standard Version)

I. Historical Background and Documents

My parents, Mama Wig and Daddy Wig, like countless number of parents today, gladly sacrificed many personal pleasures, such as new cars and expensive clothes, to ensure that my brother (Alfred) and I, and my sister, Anna, received a college education. In my mind's eye, I can still see Mama Wig punctuating the importance of earning a college degree with this family proverb that had been handed down to her from her father, Alfred Washington, who attended Hampton Institute soon after Emancipation, namely: "If Wiggins [your father] and I leave you money, you can lose it either through youthful foolishness or your falling victim to unethical business practices. But, if we give you an education, nobody or circumstance of life can take it from you." My parents were my heroes. Their firm belief in the need for education is why I have decided to focus on contemporary African American heroes and heroines of education on this the third Sunday in African American History month.

Carter G. Woodson began Negro History Week, now known as African American History Month, in February 1926. Dr. Woodson earned his Ph.D. in history from Harvard and founded The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. He has provided an annual calendar date for African Americans to pay homage to, and draw inspiration from, past and present African American men and women of valor and vision. This period also marks the birth date of freedom fighter, Frederick Douglass.

African Americans have an ever-growing pantheon of heroes and heroines who are educators. Johnnetta B. Cole, President of Bennett College, aptly expressed this truth when she wrote: "For every hero in the world, there's at least one shero."¹ Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines the two figures thusly: "hero, n. 1c. a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities." And "heroine, n. 1b a woman admired and emulated for her achievements and qualities."

Our Love of, and Fight for, Education

Education was and remains an area in which African Americans pay honor to the courageous exploits of African American men and women educators, as is evidenced by the African American proverb: "Education is the single most consistent and powerful instrument for the advancement of an individual and a people." On July 9, 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was passed, and on May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Both documents are inextricably bound to African American heroes and heroines and the struggle by the masses for full equality in education.

Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the Court said:

The section of the Fourteenth Amendment to which Chief Justice Warren referred reads:

Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

II. Excerpts on Education

The image of an African American child hungry for learning is a recurrent theme in African American autobiographies and biographies.

Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, wrote: "I had no schooling whatsoever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise."⁴

Mary McCleod Bethune
Mary McCleod Bethune, a great educator and founder of Bethune-Cookman College, recalled a bitter childhood experience with a white playmate: "She said to me 'You can't read that - put that down,' it just did something to my pride and to my heart that made me feel someday I would read just as she was reading… I went away from there determined to learn how to read and that someday I would master for myself just what they were getting and it was that aim that I followed."⁵

Howard Thurman
Howard Thurman, the distinguished theologian, recalled this conversation between his mother and his kindergarten teacher on his first day in school: "With my hair neatly combed, Mamma took me by the hand and delivered me into the hands of the teacher. She said to her, 'I want my boy to learn'."⁶

III. Our Heroes And Sheroes Are Somebody

The names of African American heroic figures are memorialized in Reverend William Holmes Borders's poem, "I Am Somebody."⁷ The late Reverend Borders, the former pastor of Wheat Street Baptist in Atlanta, Georgia, introduced this poem of racial praise on January 10, 1943; it was broadcast on "Wings Over Jordan." Between eight incremental repetitions of the refrain: "I am somebody," Reverend Borders praised past and present African American statesmen, sports figures, entertainers, writers, intellectuals, business tycoons, patriots, clergymen, et. al. In 1957, Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr. of Michigan, read the poem (with which he indicated he took liberties)⁸ into The Congressional Record to make his "colleagues. . .aware [of] the week of February 10 [which] began the annual national observance of the progress and hard-won achievements of black Americans." The poem ends with an affirmation of African American Christianity:

I AM SOMEBODY
William Holmes Borders

In politics and government: Barack Obama (U.S. Senator from Illinois and presidential candidate); John Lewis (U.S. Congressman from Georgia and elder statesman of the Civil Rights Movement); Gwen Ifill (host of "Washington Week in Review"); Louis Farrakhan (former leader of the Nation of Islam and founder of the Million Man March)

In education: Joe Clark (High School Principal); Marva Collins (Genius at Educating Children); Johnnetta B. Cole (former President of Spelman and President of Bennett College); Andrew J. Foster (founder of twenty-two schools for the deaf); and John Hope Franklin (historian and author)

In religion: Vashti McKenzie (first female AME Bishop); Otis Moss Jr. (Civil rights activist and pastor of Oliver Institutional Church in Cleveland, Ohio); Martha Simmons (first female co-owner of a preaching journal and creator of the first African American lectionary); Gardner C. Taylor (Poet Laureate of the African American Pulpit); Charles G. Adams (pastor of Hartford Memorial Church in Detroit, Michigan); James Cone (author, father of modern Liberation Theology); Katie Cannon (professor and one of the mothers of Womanist Theology); Imam Siraj Wahhaj (eminent Muslim spiritual leader); Johnnie Coleman (founder and pastor Christ Universal Temple, Chicago); Wilton Gregory (first African American to head the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops); and Jeremiah Wright Jr. (pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago)

In arts and entertainment: Toni Morrison (Nobel Prize winning author); Walter Moseley (award winning mystery writer); Oprah Winfrey (television and media mogul); Spike Lee (film and television producer); Denzel Washington (Oscar award-winning actor); Tom Joyner (founding host of The Tom Joyner Morning Show); Tavis Smiley (PBS and NPR talk show host); Wynton Marsalis (Jazz great); Rita Dove (first black Poet Laureate of the United States); and Chris Rock (comedian, television producer, and actor)

In sports: Muhammad Ali (boxing's living legend); Venus and Serena Williams (tennis champions); Tiger Woods (PGA champion); LaBron James and Bill Russell (star NBA players); Vivian Springer (head coach of Rutgers University's women's basketball team); and Tony Dungy (head coach of the 2007 NFL Champion Indianapolis Colts)

Notes