By Mwabi Kaira

I didn’t know who Fawn Weaver or Nearest Green were before I watched a Breakfast Club interview recently. The interview was so intriguing that I did some more research because I had to know more. Fawn Weaver was on vacation in Singapore the summer of 2016 when she read about Nearest Green (born Nathan Green), the Lynchburg Tennessee slave who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey. Jack Daniel's, the global whiskey brand had its beginnings from a slave? Wow. Fawn was impressed too and soaked up the story; she wanted to learn everything she could about the slave she had to read about all the way in Singapore, and his importance to such a well-known global brand.

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By Nikki Igbo

A Southern Poverty Law Center report based on a national study conducted in 2017 has revealed a sad truth about how American slavery is taught and learned. Plain and simply, American kids don’t know much about it and teachers are ill-equipped to provide students with information on the key concepts surrounding slavery. How bad is the problem? Only 8% of high school seniors know that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. 68% of high school seniors don’t know that it took a constitutional amendment to end slavery. America’s youth don't know that white supremacy sustained and protected slavery. The vast majority of textbooks present a sanitized, downright nostalgic version of the institution. Slavery was not just a fragment of American history; it was the foundation.

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Since the beginning of the month, I’ve been seeing a clip from The Rundown with Robin Thede where she says, “Happy Black History Month . . . or as we call it, Month!” on BET. Quite naturally, I know it was a joke but as most jokes go, it seems to be surrounded by a bit of truth and caused me to ask myself, “Do black people actually celebrate Black History Month?”

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