About 5 years ago I was facilitating a technical training
session for some young people in Newark, NJ. Some in the group had
strife with a few others over some petty differences. I stopped the course and
began to draw a similar graph to the one attached to this post. I didn’t fill
in the labels except the above years on the X axis and Null to High on the Y axis. I
then drew a thin red line that hugged the X axis for most of the length with a
slight uptick at the end.

I asked the young people what did the red line symbolize and
after talking together they volunteered to me that the line represented
slavery. After figuring out what slavery prevented we then labeled the graph as
attached. The point was made that the access that we currently have is
relatively recent compared to the centuries of having nothing. I asked them to compare
their current petty grievance to the centuries of privation and incalculable
pain suffered by our ancestors. I asked them what they thought our ancestors
would want us to do with the opportunity sitting in front of us. For the great sacrifices made what will we do?

That is what Black History Month means to me.