Where do you stand on the issue? I understand how some people feel about relegating Black history to one month. I, too, get a little annoyed when TV programming changes “in honor� of Black History Month, like they couldn’t air similar programs the other 11 months of the year. But if it came down to keeping Black History Month or losing it altogether, I’m in the keeping-it camp. I find it endearing that campuses from East to West, North to South, small to large, all have some Black history programming during the month of February, regardless of whether the university has a 5 percent Black student enrollment or 50 percent.

During my college days, I found that Black History Month brought the campus community together to attend various events. And even if people went their separate ways once March rolled around, we hoped they learned something about Black history and culture that maybe they didn’t already know. It is fascinating, however, that Black History Month is so entrenched into American culture that essentially all public institutions, from schools to museums to libraries to zoos! (as you’ll read in Crystal’s piece) get in on the month-long celebration.

As we go to press with this edition, the world mourns the loss of Coretta Scott King. In attendance at her funeral in Lithonia, Ga., were four U.S. presidents sitting among an overwhelmingly African-American audience in a mega-church that seats 10,000 people. How times have changed. One journalist pointed out during the coverage that in 1968 not one U.S. president attended the funeral of Mrs. King’s husband, civil rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. That seems hard to believe knowing how much he’s revered and admired today, but it’s also a testament to the much different racial climate in which we now live. 

Hilary Hurd Anyaso
Editor