Shining light on Black history month and poetry

Every year during the month of February in America, Black history is celebrated . The shortest month of the year dedicated to people who have endured many trials and tribulations and are still continuing to go through them . This is important because people of all races should be informed about the great things blacks have contributed to our history. Our ancestors were not just slaves, cotton pickers , or people of the oppressed , we were also poets , authors , and have achieved so many more things that weren't published or brought to light until many years later .

Poetry is one of the many things blacks were not recognized for until many years later . during the 1850s according to wbur.org, “african americans such as Lucy Terry Prince (1730–1821), an African-born slave whose one surviving ballad, 'Bars Fight'', is the first known poem by an African American. It describes an Indian raid on Massachusetts settlers in 1746, and was not published until 1855 , also Phillis Wheatley (1753 –1784), who was abducted from West Africa and sold as a slave in Boston, and went on to become one of the major American poets of the Colonial period. Wheatley showed prodigious intelligence as a young woman, and her volume Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) made her only the second American woman to publish a volume of poetry , and lastly , George Moses Horton (1797?–1883?), author of The Hope of Liberty (1829), the first book published in the South by an African American; his works show a new candour and defiance in their depiction of the indignities and outrages of slavery.” Those were just a few names from the long list of poet and authors that came into light in the 1850s .

In a recent interview with an english teacher at Forsyth Satellite Academy, Katherine, while moving here to america at the age of 12 she learned about black history month in a international school in New york city and the great contributions in culture african americans have provided throughout history. When she moved to virginia she soon began to realize that not many people their knew about the great contributions in culture african americans has provided. While seeing her friend graduate at Boston college , Morgan Freeman spoke and said, “ I don't like black history month because the best way to promote equality was just be being equal we shouldn't need a month for everyone to recognize that.”