Every year during Black History Month, I've noticed how the mainstream media parades the same cast of heroes for us to honor & appreciate--Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglas are all celebrated & rightfully so. After all, people of their kind were not supposed to dream far less become anything more than what the larger white majority felt they could be. Dehumanization was systematic and became the 'natural order of things'. With such a tortured backdrop, it's a wonder that African Americans accomplished as much as they have in so many spheres of endeavor. What has always intrigued me personally are the stories of the lesser-known, unheralded heroes who worked brilliantly in the shadows and never got the credit they deserved. I recently watched a HBO movie, "Something The Lord Made" which exemplifies what I'm speaking of. It illustrates the pioneering work of an African-American, Vivien Thomas, who pioneered the field of cardiac surgery with a procedure to alleviate a congenital heart defect. Sufferers faced brutally short life expectancies & his genius revolutionized a new procedure to change that.
Stories like these litter the American landscape and they need to be told. The lazy-minded habit of regurgitating the same biographical sketches of well-known historical figures, though instructive, needs to stop. A little work and imagination is all it takes.
::MixmasterE::
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