As America actively pushes back on gains in Education made by Black and Brown people, and promotes the idea that Affirmative Action is unlawful, unfair and offensive, it is clear that this fight is not over and we are in not in 2023. America still believes that WE are less smart, unqualified, and get free passes through the very systems that denied us entry without regard to any qualifiers except skin color.
It is because Education is this month’s theme that I must remind myself and others of the absolute brilliance and resilience of Black existence pre, during, and post slavery WITHOUT benefit of formal education. White America forgets that left to their own devices, there would be no admission officers or financial aid officers that look like me, no bodies of studies that tell my story. We would have no reminders that Black people who were born elsewhere, speaking many languages, carrying African names from the Motherland, or calling Compton, Chicago’s West side or Roxbury home, CAN and DO SUCCEED and THRIVE.
Take the matter of patents issued to former slaves and children of slaves, one half had little or no formal education. As examples, Lewis Howard Latimer holds 7 US patents and graduated from grade school. The Chelsea Massachusetts native was otherwise self-taught. Frederick McKinley Jones of Covington Kentucky holds 61 US patents. He left school in the 6th grade and worked odd jobs and as a cleaner until he became a mechanic at age 14. His patents include a device to combine sound with motion pictures, the truck refrigeration units and the machines that produce movie and event tickets.
Marie Van Brittan Brown trained as nurse at Harrison College but invented Home Security Systems. Out of necessity we mastered cartography. Oral history tells us that female Colombian slaves wore their braids parted in a particular way to express interest in escaping slavery, still others held maps of escape routes in their braided locks and many transported seeds of plants they wanted to carry to their new homes as free people hidden from sight in their nappy hair.
I see ingenuity and resolve in our people who have used the time and resources afforded by the COVID lock down to create entrepreneurial ventures in hair, make-up, fashion and learning. There is a plethora of signature bakeries and restaurants resultant from financial opportunities and desire. WE have lived in perpetual desire with dreams of curating our own lives in keeping with life in our ancestral land. Teaching, learning and balancing. I feel encouraged through the vetting of our partnerships when we encounter non-profits run by US with BOLD mission statements and values that are in alignment with ours. We are joining with like-minded not only to mitigate harm done, but to support a new and healthier way of living in harmony with ourselves and planet.
Sources:
African Slaves Used Braids to Communicate Escape Routes in Colombia | Ancient Origins https://bit.ly/473m0A7
Black Inventors and their Inventions https://bit.ly/3M7xPgj
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