Black History Month: Who Inspires You?
Mom became a para-professional working in classrooms when
our youngest brother at the time started first grade. When we were in Junior
High, mom started going to college part time. She eventually went on to earn
her Master’s in special education. During a teacher’s strike, she joined others
in crossing the picket line and teaching her class, dad standing guard outside
her door. She said black kids needed an education more than she needed a raise.
As a teacher, she taught our peers and their children and in
some cases their children’s children.
As a parent, she taught us “By the sweat of thy brow, thou shall
eat bread.” Back before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday was a federal
holiday, a lot of black and brown students stayed home on his birthday. Not us through;
mom made us go to school. She stopped our protests by telling us, “The best
thing you can do for black people is go to school, get and education and make
something of yourselves.” She and dad produced two writers, an accountant, and
an engineer.
I think our youngest brother, Kenon, summed it up best when
at her funeral he said: She may have only been four-foot ten, but she was a
giant in my life.
Who inspires you?
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