To highlight any one race of people over another for an entire month is un-American. When Carter G. Woodson found Negro History Week, his hope was that the need for such a celebration would gradually recede. And yet, in today’s America it is fashionable, in February, to focus on black people in a way that ultimately undermines the inspirational intent of Woodson’s original idea. This isn’t to say that black history isn’t important. But as “The Conversation” critique Sonnie Johnson argues, “Carter G. Woodson didn’t call it African American History because it wasn’t the history of Africans in America. It was the history of slaves and freedmen, how they became Americans, and the impact they had on building America.”
America’s history is beautiful. But the Progressive Left has succeeded at contorting our culture, making that last sentence controversial. My intent here is to display our country’s beauty and how all Americans helped make it so.
On February. 1, 1960 four black freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr. and David Richmond, took seats at the segregated lunch counter of F.W. Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C. They were refused service and sat peacefully until the store closed. They returned the next day, along with 25 other students, and their requests were again denied. The Greenboro four inspired similar sit-ins across the state and by the end of February, such protests were taking place across the South. Finally in July, Woolworth’s integrated all of its stores. The four have become icons of the civil rights movement.
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