Rubel Shelly: Why we need the education of Black History Month – Columbia Daily Herald

Rubel Shelly| The Daily Herald

Some people question the need for a month-long focus on African American history.

If were going to have every February as Black History Month, when do we get a White History Month?

That one is easy enough to answer: Until recently, American history has been written in terms of white culture. When a Black figure made it onto the page, it was in relation to a white person or white institution. Black History Month helps fill some of the abysmal gaps in our history by introducing names, events, and institutions that have been excluded from the record.

What have any of them done that merits being in history books? That my kids need to know their names?

While that one smacks of outright racism,let me give a forthright answer: It seems that people as white as I am tend to know a smaller percentage of Black historical figures than a similar list of Caucasian figures in history. What do you know about, for example, Dorothy Johnson Vaughan or Mark Dean?

Vaughan (1910-2008) was a skilled mathematician whose work was critical to NASA and figured prominently in the mission that launched John Glenn into space. When she was hired to help with the space program, she and her African American colleagues had to eat and use bathroom facilities in segregated areas. Her story is told in a 2016 book and film titled Hidden Figures.

Dean, born in 1956, has long been recognized as one of IBM Corporations most eminent engineers. In the early 1980s, he and a colleague developed a system that allows computers to communicate with printers and other devices. I am indebted to him.

Then what about Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Madame C.J. Walker, W.E.B. Du Bois, Billie Holiday, Thurgood Marshall, Vivien Thomas, Dizzy Gillespie, Henrietta Lacks, Rosa Parks, Fred Gray, Jackie Robinson, Toni Morrisonor John Lewis? My point is simply that beyond Martin Luther King Jr. or Oprah, people over 50 dont know much about Black history. Black History Month will help our children and grandchildren do better with these names.

Weve had the Civil Rights Movement now, and weve passed laws to correct all those things. Why cant they just move on?

That one, when put into words, doesnt really need an answer.

My personal sensitivity to this issue has been heightened since I began to notice reactions to my opening-day lecture in Medical Ethics Class. As I begin to explain the need for serious ethical reflection in medicine, I cite a couple of egregious examples of unethical events.

I start with the notorious Nazi practices. Physicians and nurses killed off deformed children, mentally ill adults, elderly personsand minority populations. They also performed gruesome experiments on healthy prisoners. They froze Jews to death to gather information on hypothermia. Poles and Slavs were deprived of oxygen in depressurizing experiments for the Luftwaffe. They sterilized inferior women. They created the pseudo-science of eugenics.

Once students are thoroughly indignant over such atrocities in Europe, I introduce a close-to-home event that shows that Americans have not been above ethical reproach. So I ask, How many of you know about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?

Every person of color raises his or her hand. Typically, only about 20%of white students have heard of it. Six hundred men 399 with syphilis and 201 as a control group were studied for bad blood from 1932 until 1972. All were Black. Penicillin was discovered to be specific for treating syphilis in 1947. Not one person in the group was offered penicillin between 1947 and 1972, when Jean Heller exposed what had been going on.

If you dont know about Tuskegee, Google it. It will help you understand why Black people lack a great deal of eagerness over the COVID-19 vaccine.

It will help you understand why we need Black History Month.

Rubel Shelly is a philosopher-theologian, who writes regular columns forThe Daily Herald.

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Rubel Shelly: Why we need the education of Black History Month - Columbia Daily Herald