Black History Month: Has it run its course?

‘A little's better than nothing at all’
Kimberly Pollock, an educator in Washington state, agreed with Dodson.

“Sometimes what’s missing does as much damage as what’s misconstrued,” said Pollock, chairman of ethnic and cultural studies at Bellevue Community College, outside Seattle. “When you’re learning about history and the Founding Fathers and people who’ve great things, the fact that there are black people missing leads one to think they haven’t done great things,” she said.

“We need African American History Month; even a little time is better than nothing at all,” she said.

For another educator, Freeman's provocative comments rang true, and pointed to a need for blacks to be more widely depicted in American life without the customary attachment of ethnic descriptors.

“In the 21st century, Morgan Freeman is right,” said Andrew P. Jackson, president of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. “By now we shouldn’t have to remind anyone of the contributions of black people.

"We should be past that, but we're not. Not until you can go to school and not have to take African American classes, not until you can go to classes and learn about Langston Hughes as part of American literature instead of African American literature.”

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