As a freshman in high school, I’m able to say that throughout my school career I haven’t received the proper education on Black History Month, or black history in general. In most of my history classes, I learned more about the important white people rather than the important black people. When I was little and even now, I would see the commercials on TV about black history month and not even recognize some of the people. I CAN’T know about something or someone that I HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN TAUGHT ABOUT!

Now that I’m in high school and -most- people around me are more mature, I see how Black History Month can be crucial to our education. Before I started to go out into the world and learn things for myself, I would base my knowledge on the things I learned in school; which lead to little elementary school me to see commercials on Disney channel about Black History Month and not know what it was.

Being white myself, it’s hard to truly appreciate black history since I haven’t been taught about it well enough. I have also seen some black people that aren’t very passionate about their OWN history because of the same reason. I believe this is a problem because black people should be able to engage in their history at school just as much as white people do. Almost all of the lessons we learn in history class are focused on white people in history, with the occasional black man or woman.

I will say, I’ve learned about the more significant black people such as Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Malcom X, and Hank Aaron, but what about the others that are just as important? What about the “lesser known” events in black history? I tested myself, and off the top of my head I thought of almost twice as many white historical figures as I did black. I found it much easier to come up with a list of white people because that’s who we mainly learn about in school, and when we actually learned about black people it is most likely connected to slavery or the civil rights movement.

I asked students to think of the first black person in history that came to their head, and out of 25 people 16 said Martin Luther King Jr. That’s more than half. That leaves 9 people to say something different and 3 of those people said Rosa Parks. Yes, Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks are two very important people in history, but there is more to black history than just those two people.

Although important events to remember, students in school need to be reminded that slavery and the civil rights movement are not the only things in black history. Think about the more recent events such as Black Lives Matter. The Black Lives Matter movement started 4 years ago, and I have not been taught anything about it at school. After a little bit of self teaching, I learned the Black Lives Matter movement was sparked in 2013 after the murder of 17 year old Trayvon Martin. The movement started off as a hashtag and, after 4 years, grew into so much more.

I believe that black history, white history, and any other races history are equally important, so its hard for me to understand why, after 10 years in school, black history has not made an equal appearance in my education as white history has. No, I’m not writing this paper to try to change the history curriculum, but I am writing it to prove the importance of Black History Month. Not only is Black History Month a time for black people to treasure their history, it is also a time for all people no matter what race to reflect on the importance of black history. So, every Black History Month, I challenge you to learn something new about black history.