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My Black History Journey: Mississippi and the Mott Brach Library

My Black History Journey: 

Mississippi and the Mott Branch Library

Emerging from the backdrop of home and "The Shop" was the coalescing of different factors as I entered school at Martin Luther King School for kindergarten and later Nativity/Pickett Elementary. As the Civil Rights movement was ending my teachers in our urban community were motivated to adapt the curriculum to teach the predominantly black students about themselves. Ms. Ricketts, Ms Sutfield, Ms. Gibson, Ms. Coleman, Ms. Gaines, and Ms. Clark all excelled in introducing me and my classmates to our culture. Also, we traveled to the Sepia Theater in our community to watch the movie Sounder and took a field trip to the Mott Branch Library to get our first library cards in the second grade.

Mott Branch Library located on Door Street in the heart of the black community in Toledo was a sanctuary to me. There were books to address almost every question my curious mind could consider.  It happened almost by accident, I walked down the aisle looking for another book and I saw a book that would change my academic life. Great Negroes Past and Present had vignettes of accomplished Americans who were black and not noted in the normal history books. They were men, women, statesmen and inventors.  I also picked up Great Negro Scientists. Checking out these two books, I was determined to read them before their due dates.

Learning about Dr. Daniel Hale Williams who performed the first heart surgery in Chicago, Ralph Bunche the architect of the United Nations and Garrett Morgan inventor of stoplight catapulted my young life to another level.  I realized that despite what was on television and in the news that there were other trailblazers, like my father who were leading in different fields. Also, it became clear I could be anything that God wanted me to be. They key would be the development of my intellectual gifts. Reading the stories of these pioneers inspired me while pushing me to live a life of significance.

It was Mississippi, the birthplace of both my grandfathers, Willie Woodley and Roosevelt Jones, Sr., my great grandfather, George Jones, gret great grandfather Isaac Ginn and the origin if most of my family was the next key in my Black History journey.  My first trip there was at six years old and my Aunt Lou Bee in Mound Bayou taught me so many lessons over the next three summers. 

It was the early 70's less than 20 years after the torture of Emmitt Till, less than a decade after the murders of Medgar Evers, Goodman, Schwener, and Chaney. In this setting I experienced and awakening. Walking the dusty roads of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, gave me a connection to how my people had worked and lived for hundreds of years. Watching my cousins arise early in the morning to get on a truck to go to a cotton field to pick made Black History a reality.

Learning at the library and experiencing history in Mississippi connected me to the power of Black History. I was beginning to understand that I was a link in a chain, part of a people and a movement that was still being fought. Embracing my history informed my identity and prepared me for the struggle to gain the full rights of an American citizen and a black man.

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