The OWL

                           Black History Month is a time to celebrate Black people throughout history, what they did and the struggles they faced. It is important to note, though, that remembering people should not only be in February but year round because of their importance to American history. Usually during Black History Month, schools and most people tend to focus on Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Ruby Bridges. While they are very important to the Black struggle, they were not the only people fighting and making a difference. Some people do not get the recognition they deserve.
Bayard Rustin was a leader in social movements for civil rights, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1912. He organized many protests from the 1940s to the 1960s as well as organizing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, according to Stanford University’s King Institute. Rustin also supported LGBTQ+ rights, labor rights, nuclear disarmament, and international human rights activism. Rustin himself was openly part of the LGBTQ+ community. One of his famous quotes was, “When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.”
                      Gordon Parks was a filmmaker born on Nov. 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kansas. Parks was known for his photojournalism in the civil rights movement, and he contributed to the Blaxploitation films, a genre aimed at appealing to Black urban audiences. Parks became a staff photographer for Life magazine in 1948 and the first African American to be hired by the magazine, according to his foundation website. One of his sayings was, “I have, for a long time, worked under the premise that everyone is worth something; that every life is valuable to our own existence. Consequently, I’ve felt it was my camera’s responsibility to shed light on any condition that hinders growth or warps the spirit of those trapped in the ruinous evils of poverty… To me, they were ghosts of my own past.”
                     Marsha P. Johnson was a well-known and distinguished figure in the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York City. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on Aug. 24, 1945, Johnson was born male but transitioned to becoming a woman and was determined to fight for the rights of others. She made sure to help people who were also transitioning and did not have the support group for it. In 1970, Johnson and Sylvia Rivera created STAR and STAR House, which supports young trans people who have been disowned by their loved ones, according to the National Women’s History Museum. One of her famous quotes was, “I don’t think you should be ashamed of anybody you know that has AIDS. You should stand as close to them as you can and help them out as much as you can. I’m a strong believer in that and that’s why I try to do that for everyone I know has the virus.”
                      Gil Scott-Heron, also referred to as the “Godfather of rap,” was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 1, 1949. Scott-Heron was a known songwriter and musician who helped to bring awareness to the lack of media coverage surrounding civil rights activists, according to his website. His poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” became a call to action in the 1960s. “I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside,” was one of Scott-Heron’s well known quotes.
                      Ella Baker was born in 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia. She grew up listening to stories her grandparents told her about being enslaved. She began to work with the Young Negroes’ Cooperative League, which aimed to help Black people gain economic independence. In 1941, Baker got a new job as a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She spent the next three years traveling through the Deep South, recruiting members, raising money, and spreading awareness about the importance of civil rights, according to her website. In 1964 Baker said, “Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.”