Maya Angelou Public Radio Special: Award-Winning Poet On Why Black History Month Still Matters

Dr. Maya Angelou says you have no way of knowing where you're going if you don't know where you've been. "The more you know of your history," she said in an exclusive interview with Huffington Post BlackVoices, "the more liberated you are."

Those themes -- liberation, sacrifice, tribute and celebration -- are at the heart of her new Black History Month special, airing this month on public radio stations across the country. (The full schedule, as well as excerpts from the interviews, can be found here.)

"We need to say we are still here, that we have grown and survived and done better than that -- we have thrived," she said. Young people, she added, "need to hear that now, in 2012 as much as in 1952."

In the interviews, Angelou talks with Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, who recounts his first meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who would go on to mentor him during the Civil Rights Movement. Other shows include: Ambassador Andrew Young recalls how his training as a minister helped him navigate the world of diplomacy in the United Nations; Nikky Finney reads her poem "Red Velvet," a meditation on Rosa Parks; Mary J. Blige shares her struggles on her journey to personal freedom; and Dr. Julianne Malveaux remembers how time spent after school with the Black Panthers introduced her to activism.

Although she is excited at the progress of African Americans, she worries that some have become increasingly removed from the hard-fought struggles of the Civil Rights Movement and the ancestors who "stood on auction blocks and got up before sunrise and worked in the fields after sunset so you could be alive today." Young people, she said, "don't realize that they've already been paid for."

But what about this post-racial world ushered in with the election of President Barack Obama? "I don't even know what that means," she said. "Racism is going to be with us as long as ignorance has full sway, and ignorance has a starring role right now." Looking back, Angelou feels we made a "huge mistake" as the walls of segregation started to crumble and integration started to roll across the country. "A number of us threw the pickets away and said, 'It's all over now but the shouting.'"

Angelou has been in the news for her recent collaboration with hip-hop artist Common on his latest album -- and her reported disappointment with his use of the N-word and the B-word. (She said that journalists had "clogged up [her] phone" to tell her.)

So what would she do? "Well, I'll do nothing. It's been done." She recalled how the 15th-century philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli counseled that the sure way to control people was to divide them. "He wrote: separate them and you can conquer them," Angelou said. "Well, I won't be separated from Common or from any of the young men and women. I won't."

"I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation," she said. "And when they understand enough, they'll do wonders. I count on them."

Comments

[boscobear]

09:29 AM on 02/17/2012

Not too craxy about her after her visit to WV. Had the time to read her poetry, meet with the suits but not the time to meet with children who had made her a gift.

[sandrita mason]

06:05 PM on 02/15/2012

What would the creator of Black History Week/Month, Carter G. Woodson, say today? Undoubtedly, he would say that not only is Black History Month still needed, but that its purpose has been distorted. Dr. Woodson knew that the prejudice Blacks face is rooted in accounts of history that show blacks as latecomers to civilization. Dr. Woodson's THE MISEDUCATION OF THE NEGRO laid out the kinds of omissions that should have been included in those accounts:
“ancient Africans of the interior knew sufficient science to concoct poisons for arrowheads, to mix durable colors for paintings, to extract metals from nature and refine them for development in the industrial arts... the chemistry in the method of Egyptian embalming which was the product of the mixed breeds of Northern Africa, now known in the modern world as "colored people."….. these instructors usually started with Greece but they omitted the African influence which scientists now regard as significant and dominant in early Hellas... the Mediterranean Melting Pot with the Negroes from Africa bringing their wares, their ideas and their blood therein to influence the history of Greece, Carthage, and Rome.”
The grand narrative of history still shows blacks as absent from the world stage before 1492 In Black History Month we should re-commit ourselves to correcting history as Carter G. Woodson intended.

[Jack Polk]

10:25 PM on 02/15/2012

Very good post!.

[Astro Girl]

01:36 AM on 02/16/2012

The problem is the state of Black nations/communities etc..

Using Egypt as an example is ridiculous. Egypt is thousand years old, and has nothing to do with Black American slaves' original roots (West Africa).

Black American slavery was not during Egypt's reign, so there is no correlation.

Saying to your math teacher that your great-great-great-great-grandpa was a genius is irrelevant, when you can't do basic math.

It's not White folks problem that there isn't a sufficient account of Black history, it's really Black people's fault. Africans don't even have a written language. Find me one (and please don't start with hieroglyphs or Amharic (which is a mixture of Arab and found in Ethiopia)

I would luv to see one African makes half of these claims you've mentioned.

[sandrita mason]

01:52 PM on 02/16/2012

First of all, if mixed race African-Americans are to be considered black, then the ancient Egyptians also should be considered black. Youtube is full of videos about the blackness of the ancient Egyptians. My favoite is Egypt, Child of Africa. Moreover, Cheikh Anta Diop wrote about the connections (both genetic and cultural) between West Africans and ancient Egyptians. Secondly, "Africa Had Its Own Writing Systems" in the Aug/Sept 2011 issue of New African details the Vai Script, Bamum Script, and Adinkra writing systems of West Africa. There is also the Meroitic writing from Nubia as well as west African writing found on manuscripts from Timbuktu.

[meeks]

02:33 PM on 02/15/2012

She is a classy lady. Love her.

[reggieChee-a-tow]

10:37 AM on 02/15/2012

While i really respect and admireDr.Angelou,I must humbly disagree with her assertion that it is imperative to know whre you have been in order to know where you are going.no ethnic group in this country know more about where they have been than African-americans.It's pounded into their brains day in and day out.Yet where has it got them?Economically and educationally African-Americans are still at the bottom of the ladder,even below immigrants who have come from impoverished ,back-water countries.These new immigsrants are concerned with where they are today,and use that as a yard-stick of where they want ot be tomorrow.They do not waste time pondering on where they came from.

[hjo4]

02:18 PM on 02/15/2012

So you think all that needs to known about American Black history has been told. Then I'll presume you're well aware of this piece of history,

http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/about/

The more our history is told, the more it speaks to the savage and unspeakable behavior that happen to us by White Americans and sanctioned by this government. I understand all to well why folks like you do not wish Black people to learn our history on these shores.
American Black citizens are not immigrants and it's been folks like you who has lied, revised and rewritten history, but as we know what's done in the dark does come out in the light.

[lovetostitch]

05:51 PM on 02/16/2012

Thank you for your post. Folks should watch "Slavery By Another Name". I have seen part of it, and it describes events that were certainly not mentioned when I was in school. All we heard about from that era was the oppression by sharecropping, which was bad enough.

Thank you for the link. Check it out, folks!

[wrenmark]

11:38 PM on 02/14/2012

What month is White History Month???.......just curious.

[Chumbolex]

01:02 AM on 02/15/2012

November.

You know, Thanksgiving.

You know. The celebration of white survival in the harsh new world.

You know.

[moflard]

05:30 AM on 02/17/2012

What that "white survival" because Native Americans showed them how to get their European crops to grow?

[hjo4]

08:01 AM on 02/15/2012

October is White Pride Month

[hjo4]

05:54 PM on 02/14/2012

Perhaps Maya Angelou can have a talk with her girlfriend Oprah who has control over her own Network but has not recognized Black History month at all, for the second year in a row. Oprah has completely abandoned Black people and Black History although she's been blessed with the vehicle to educate the world about the rich history of American Blacks.She has failed to show any meaningful programming about Black folks also. I honor, admire and respect Maya Angelou but perhaps she can send her words to her daughter Oprah, she needs to hear what Dr Angelou has to say about Black History month and remembering where we came from more than anyone.

[cuteliberalchick]

05:27 PM on 02/14/2012

Maya you are an Icon

[Otherday]

04:41 PM on 02/14/2012

One thing that I'd do to celebrate African-American/black history is to, once again, make Lincoln's birthday a national holiday. A missing component in our important celebration of civil rights progress in the USA, is the lack of appreciation for those who were important in it, those who did what they could for blacks, who were white.

Consider President Obama's mother, for instance. She got it. Lincoln got it. Millions of other whites got it - although, for too many years, too many whites did not get it. I'm a white guy. I had 4 (that I know of) direct ancestors who fought in Lincoln's armies in the Civil War. Lincoln said, at the time, that the "colored" soldiers in the ranks were "necessary" for the victory, right? Millions of white folk, like President Obama's mother, were "necessary" for civil rights progress for blacks, true? Why not celebrate that too? Tip the hat to your friends? It's the right thing to do - and it is good politics as well. Give credit where it is due.

[Sablescorpion]

11:57 AM on 02/15/2012

He does have a national holiday.

President’s Day:

1. official holiday: an official holiday commemorating the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

[Otherday]

12:51 PM on 02/15/2012

"Presidents Day" also celebrates Millard Fillmore. Lincoln deserves better.

[Frank Bourne]

12:15 PM on 02/16/2012

>>> "Consider President Obama's mother, for instance. She got it."

Got what? Knocked up by a philandering African?

[Otherday]

12:26 PM on 02/16/2012

She, obviously, treated humans with equal dignity and respect (something religious people claim to believe in), and was a wife (twice) to men of a race other than her own. She also had the parenting skills to raise a President of the United States.