Pasadena Black History Month Magazine - February 2024 | Pages 5 & 6
POLITICAL GUMBO: BE THAT LIGHT
WRITTEN BY ANDRÉ COLEMAN
MANAGING EDITOR
Black History Month is once again upon us. Once again the parades and events have been planned to celebrate the accomplishments of Black people.
But we need to do more. This is a month when every American needs to stop and reflect on tolerance and understand the Black. Experience is in fact the American Experience.
Keep reading and you'll understand why.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X understood the system and each worked in their own way to combat racism and segregation to bring about change.
One man was about education and nonviolence and the other advocated that equality came by any means necessary and Black awareness.
Malcolm X once said "A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself."
I love that quote.
But the group that intrigued me the most has. always been the Black Panthers.
Led by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the armed brothers in black started their movement in Oakland, feeding people and serving the community and openly carrying weapons on the streets to monitor police activity.
The first two I recommend, the last one is not a good idea.
They showed up at the state's capitol with their guns, also not a good idea, and it didn't take long for politicians in the state to change the gun laws, which was not the result they wanted.
BLACK HISTORY MONTH MAGAZINE 2024