Teach One, Reach One
Why Black History and Your History Is Important
Scriptures: Deut. 6:1-9; Proverbs 29:18
The title of my message this morning is “Teach One, Reach One.”
Moses told the Children of Israel “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.” He told them God had commanded that he teach them the statutes that God had commanded them so that when they entered the Promise Land they would not forget them. Keep this in mind as I will come back to it later.
The month of February is designated as Black History month and even though for some it’s just another month, there is a reason that we should pause and reflect on the historical contributions blacks have made not only in America but around the world. From a historical perspective, the precursor to Black History Month was created in 1926 in the United States, when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be "Negro History Week." This week was chosen because it coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and Frederick Douglass (February 14) both of which dates Black communities had celebrated together since the late 19th century. From the event's initial phase, primary emphasis was placed on encouraging the coordinated teaching of the history of American blacks in the nation's public schools. The expansion of Black History Week to Black History Month was first proposed by the leaders of the Black United Students at Kent State University in February 1969. The first celebration of the Black History Month took place at Kent State one year later, in February 1970. In 1976 as part of the United States Bicentennial, the informal expansion of Negro History Week to Black History Month was officially recognized by the U.S. government. President Gerald Ford spoke in regards to this, urging Americans to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."
This morning I want to impress upon you the importance of understanding your history – whether you are black, white, Native American, Hispanic, etc., you need to know. Why? Because when you understand the history you can better understand your approach to the future. When you understand your past others cannot define it for you and tell you what you should or not know, accept and ultimately believe based on “their” understanding of “your” past. When we know our past and can teach others who share a similar history, teach one, reach one, the past is not forgotten and we have evidence and fuel for the future. To prove this point, I want to give you a few examples.
Raise your hands if you know or have heard of Bass Reeves. How many of you are familiar with the legendary figure the Lone Ranger? Maybe you saw the TV series or you read about him in books. In the TV series the Lone Ranger was portrayed by Clayton Moore, a white male. Tonto, was played by Jay Silverheels, a Canadian of the Mohawk Aboriginal people. In the TV series, the Lone Ranger wore a black mask so that his enemies could not recognize him. In reality this character was modeled after the “real” lone ranger, a black lawman named Bass Reeves. Many aspects of his life were written out of the story, including his ethnicity. The basics however remained the same: a lawman hunting bad guys, accompanied by a Native American, riding on a white horse, and with a silver trademark. Historians of the American West have also, until recently, ignored the fact that this man was African American, a free black man who headed West to find himself less subject to the racist structure of the established Eastern and Southern states. He was credited with arresting more than 3000 felons.
What about Lewis Latimer, how many of you are familiar with Him? How many of you have heard of Thomas Edison? Are you seeing a pattern? In 1874, Lewis Latimer, co-patented (with Charles W. Brown) an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the Water Closet for Railroad Cars (U.S. Patent 147,363). In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell employed Latimer, then a draftsman at Bell's patent law firm, to draft the necessary drawings required to receive a patent for Bell's telephone. Latimer received a patent in January 1881 for the "Process of Manufacturing Carbons", an improved method for the production of carbon filaments used in lightbulbs. The Edison Electric Light Company in New York City hired Latimer in 1884, as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights. Latimer is credited with an improved process for creating a carbon filament at this time, which was an improvement on Thomas Edison's original paper filament, which would burn out quickly. While Edison is credited for inventing the lightbulb, it was actually Latimer invention that got it to work the way Edison envisioned and yet you seldom hear his name. At the time of his death in 1928 he held seven U.S. patents.
Now raise your hands if you know what these individuals have in common with the Civil Rights movement: William Moore, Rev. Bruce Klunder, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Rev. James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, Jonathan Daniels, and Juliette Morgan. Each of these individuals participated in and died during the Civil Rights movement. What makes them stand out is that each of these individuals were white and gave their lives fighting for racial equality. I bring this to your attention because some would have you believe that Black history month is totally about the history of blacks and what we contributed to America, but it’s about much more. Our history includes the Civil Rights movement which included white Americans who believed in equal rights for all races. We must remember that there were many whites who supported and believed that all men were created equal and were willing to take a stand for that belief. I want to make this crystal clear, there were some white Americans who walked the front lines and died because they supported equal rights. They did this in place of some blacks who felt that fighting for equal rights was not worth their own lives. I want you to not forget that there were some who stood up for us when we would not stand for ourselves. They too deserve to be remembered during this time. Now let me give you three examples from the Bible because some would have you believe that blacks were not represented in the Bible.
The Queen of Sheba, who was Ethiopian, visited Solomon to test his wisdom (1 Kings 10). She had heard about his wisdom and wanted to see for herself if what she had heard was true. She tested his wisdom through a series of questions. Once satisfied she acknowledged Solomon’s God who had given him such wisdom. The Bible says that she gave Solomon gifts and he did likewise to her. This is all the Bible says about her visit. However, from this story came the “legend” that she had an affair with Solomon and that he produced a son through her. I will come back to this shortly. The Jewish historian Josephus does not record this belief.
How many of you have heard of Simon of Cyrene? He was a man of color whom the Roman soldiers tasked with carrying the cross of Jesus when Jesus was too weak to carry it (Matthew 27:32). It is interesting that he is sometimes left out of the lists of black people in the Bible and I will come back to this also.
My last example is Ham. Having grown up in the south I had heard about Ham and the “history” of the black man. Ham was one of Noah’s sons who helped him build the ark. Ham sinned against his father Noah by seeing the “nakedness of his father.” This does not simply mean that Ham saw Noah naked as Noah lay sleeping (although this is one view), but something a lot more serious. When you read the Old Testament and you read the term “uncovering the nakedness….” that term is generally used to describe some type of sexual act, “uncovering the nakedness of someone.” There is disagreement as to what really happened but what is clear is that Noah placed a curse on Canaan and not on Ham who committed the act (Genesis 9:25.) Take a minute and let this sink in because it important to what I am about to tell you. Listen closely, it has been taught for hundreds of years that the curse placed upon Ham was a curse that caused his skin to become “black.” Ham is widely “considered” to be the father of the black race because the curse placed upon him changed his skin color. Now if you believe this you must also accept the fact that the black race came into existence because Noah cursed his son Ham (which he of course did not do.) The idea that Ham’s curse was for his skin to be made black and thus all of his descendants would be black justified slavery for hundreds of years both in Europe and in America. The justification came many believed that Noah’s curse was on Ham and besides turning his skin black, it also included that all of his descendants would be servants (slaves) and serve their brothers. My grandfather, a Baptist minister, told me this story when I was a child and I do not believe that he agreed with this teaching. If you go on the internet today and Google “blacks in the Bible” or just Google “Ham” you will find references to Ham being the father of the black race. Now imagine hearing this story of your race as a child and growing up thinking that your skin color was caused by a curse placed upon a man who sinned against his father. Imagine thinking that there truly was something wrong with being dark skin. It was bad enough when others believed it about you but it became a lot worse when you believed it about yourself. Are you able to understand what I am telling you. This may be the first time that some of you have ever heard this and yet it is a prominent teaching in racist circles – that God created us inferior because of something Noah’s son Ham did thousands of years ago. In a 2004 review of David Goldenberg's “The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam” published in 2003, states that Goldenberg "argues persuasively that the biblical name Ham bears no relationship at all to the notion of blackness and as of now is of unknown etymology." There have been others who have argued against this belief since its inception hundreds of years ago and yet the belief still exists.
These are just a few examples of why we need to understand our past from both a racial and Christian viewpoint. If we do not know the truth we will forever believe a lie. If you have been taught that you are inferior and someone points out that your race has not had any impact of historical significance because it’s not recorded anywhere that lends to an acceptance of the facts by a preponderance of the evidence – even if the evidence is absolutely wrong. I want to go back to what I mentioned about the Queen of Sheba and Simon of Cyrene. As I was doing some research on this I found a trend in one search that I found very interesting. In several instances when you Google “blacks in the Bible” when the individuals were listed, ninety percent were associated with something negative that happened in Biblical history. I read one article that said God continuously cursed the Children of Israel because Moses had married a woman of color. What I also found interesting is that Simon of Cyrene was sometimes left off those same lists. This was not an accident and if a person did not know better or searched “harder” they could have easily accepted the fact that there was nothing positive in Scripture pertaining to people of color even though most people in the Bible had color just from the fact of being on the continent they were on. My point is that we need to know, understand and believe in the truth. We must research and learn for ourselves and stop accepting any lie as fact just because we refuse to verify it.
Allow me read fully what Moses instructed the Children of Israel to do when he brought them out of Egypt. “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:1-9)
Moses told the Children of Israel to Teach and Remember! They were not just to learn it for themselves, they had to teach them to their sons and daughters and their grandsons and grand-daughters. Each generation was to teach the next so that nothing was lost with each subsequent generation. Moses was not telling them to passively teach their children, there was a sense of urgency and importance that was to accompany it. This was about life and death – mainly theirs! The commandments that God had given Moses was so important that they were to write them down and put them in places where they could not help but see them. These were not to be placed in a journal and left on a shelf never to be read. They were to be publicly displayed so all could see it. Nothing was to be hidden.
Black history month is to make sure the contribution of people of color is not hidden. It should be shared alongside the achievements of other races. Just as all lives matter, all history matters. It’s not just the selected, approved history that justifies a lifestyle! Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained. But happy is he who keeps the law.” Some translations say “without a vision the people perish.” We need to be able to see where we are going – that is the vision. Being able to see sets the boundaries. It gives us the ability to take in some information and ignore other based on where we are going. Having a vision allows us to stay focused on the goal because we take in what will help us reach the goal while removing what is not helpful. All of this is tied to our understanding of our past. Everyone, regardless of race, has a desire to know something about their ancestors. This is why websites that allow you to search your backgrounds are so popular. To understand our pasts allows us to operate in our future.
In 1986 when I was home for my mother’s funeral, I watch a movie with my brother Delrick. The move was “Back to the Future” where a teenager traveled from 1985 back to 1955. I want to close with this illustration from this movie. In this movie the teenager, Marty Mcfly, was a member of a very boring family that had many issues. At the beginning of the movie the mother tells the kids the story of how she and their father met which led to them getting married. It is very apparent that the mother had told this story many times. Later in the movie the Marty went 30 years in the past to 1955 in a time machine that his friend and mentor had created. When he got to the past he was stuck there and to complicate matters worse he had interfered with his parents meetings which threatened his existence (if his parents never married he would cease to exist.) His job was twofold – get his parents to date and get back home to 1985. The only way he could accomplish either was he had to remember the past. Marty remembered the stories his mother had told them about how she met their father and he used that information to get them together. He also had a flyer about a lightning strike that could harness enough energy to power the time machine. By remembering this information he was able to get his parents together and return to the future (1985.) What I want you to see is that he needed to understand the past in order to get back to his present. But experiencing the past helped him to understand his parent’s relationship because he now had a historical perspective. This new perspective changed his future.
Black history month is not just about famous black Americans who have done something great. Everyone sitting under the sound of my voice or reading this message has a history. Black history month does not capture your specific history, but focuses on the history of members of our race. But this is where it stops and where our jobs begin. Black history does not capture the story of the single mother who worked three jobs to educate her children to be successful. It does not capture that father who was not educated but provided for his family and ensured that his children were well taken care of. It does not cover the teachers, both black and white, who encouraged us in school to go further than society would ever have thought we could go. It does not cover the lowly school janitor who always had an encouraging word on Sunday morning because he was also the pastor of a local Church. It does not cover the many small acts of kindness that many have done because people did not seek recognition for it. This is the history that we must tell our children. We must tell them our stories. We must tell them of our struggles and how we made it through. We must instill upon them a sense of self that is not based on how others define them, but on how they define themselves based on what they can do. We must teach them our history!
I have been blessed in my lifetime to have people around me who believed in me, both white and blacks. I got my first white teacher in the 5th grade and she pushed me because she saw the potential. Although there were white kids in the class too, she made no difference between us. She was the first one who opened my eyes as a child that not all white people in the south were bad people. We must share our stories. If we teach one we will reach one and then they will reach others. Your individual history, regardless of your race, is important to your children and to their children. Stop withholding that knowledge.
Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
