Starting a conversation with your children about the significance of Black History Month can be intimidating and confusing where to start. Here are a few pointers on where to begun.
My personal suggestion is that you focus on the Civil Right Movement and save the talks about slavery for the older kids.
My last bit of advice is search for a Black hero that they can share at school or with family based of their interests.
My personal suggestion is that you focus on the Civil Right Movement and save the talks about slavery for the older kids.
- Explain there was a time in this country and most of the world where people with darker skin were not treated equally as Caucasians, and that Caucasian means a white skinned person. People with darker skin were often called names and attacked by hate groups that did not see them as equal.
- Give examples of protests: Rosa parks not giving up here seat. Many sit-ins held in cafeterias. Also brave men and women of color sitting at the counter in restaurants only to be hit, thrown to the ground, and arrested.
- The southern states of the US practiced Jim Crow laws. Which meant people of color couldn't use the same bathrooms and even drinking fountains.
- Ask your children questions to see if they comprehend and to reflect on the conversation.
- Does this sound fair and kind to you?
- What do you think we can do to prevent this from happening again?
- If your child has friends of different races ask how they would feel if they were separated from them. Forced to attend different schools or not aloud to play together.
My last bit of advice is search for a Black hero that they can share at school or with family based of their interests.
A few hero suggestions
Misty Danielle Copeland (born September 10, 1982) is an American ballet dancer for American Ballet Theatre (ABT), one of the three leading classical ballet companies in the United States. On June 30, 2015, Copeland became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer in ABT's 75-year history.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball second baseman who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball(MLB) in the modern era.
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an African American jazz and pop music singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned over 70 years appearing in film, television, and theater. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of 16 and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the 1943 films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Because of the Red Scare and her political activism, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.
Guion Stewart Bluford Jr., Ph.D. (born November 22, 1942), (Col, USAF, Ret.), is an American aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer and fighter pilot, and former NASA astronaut, who was the first African American in space.