Black history should be studied year-round
Since 1976, every president has designated February to be Black History Month. Black History Month is in February because it links up with Abraham Lincoln and Gerald Ford. People made a month-long celebration instead of a week because one week was not enough. During this time and all year round, we should remember and honor figures like Emmett Till and Hank Aaron.
Somebody I learned about is Emmett Till. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago who was visiting family in Mississippi in 1955. Emmett was brutally murdered on August 28, 1955, for supposedly flirting with a white woman four days beforehand. The white woman and her husband, as well as her brother, reportedly made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. Then, they ordered him to do things he didn’t want to do, but did them anyway in hopes that wouldn’t get killed or arrested for not listening. As he did these things, he could tell something was off. The two men came around him and started beating him almost to death; they then made him suffer deeply with gouging out his eye. Emmett was then shot in the head, tied to the fan with barbed wire, and his body was thrown in the lake.
According to some reports, some boys dared him to ask out the white woman behind the counter for a date. He went into the drug store where she was working and bought some candy. As he walked out, he may have said, “Bye, baby,” to the woman behind the counter, but there is no evidence this occurred. The white woman later on claimed that he grabbed her, made lewd advances, and wolf whistled at her, but, years later, she confessed that these accusations were completely false. There is no evidence he did anything besides buy some candy, and, even if all of this was true, this 14-year-old did not deserve to be tortured and murdered.
Three days after Emmett died, his body was recovered. He was so disfigured that Mose Wright wanted to bury the body quickly, but Emmett’s mother requested it be sent back to Chicago. Years later, in 2017, the white woman, Carolyn, confessed that the boy had never touched nor harassed her and did nothing to deserve what happened to him. Sadly, young African American men have continued to be treated violently and even murdered due to racism like this since this tragedy. We should remember and honor Emmett Till so that nothing like this ever happens again.
Another important person in our history is Hank Aaron, who was an African American professional baseball player for the Milwaukee Atlanta Braves and the Milwaukee Brewers. By May 1970, Hank had become one of the top 100 players to record 500 homers and 3,000 hits. He is also known as “Hammer,” “Hammerin’ Hank,” and “Hank.” In addition, he broke Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs, which he established in 1935. After retiring, Aaron became one of baseball’s first Black executives with the Atlanta Braves. In 1959, he had won his second league batting title. At the time, many people were very upset Babe’s record had been broken because he had held that record for 40 years, then an African American man beat him. We should honor Hank Aaron for his accomplishments.
In the end, I believe that we should learn about black history all year round because it is a huge part of American history and plays a big part. Even if you don’t see or know about it, it’s definitely there.
Elli Glass is a seventh-grader at Canonsburg Middle School and is the daughter of Kalyn Ferricks of Canonsburg.