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Warren event teaches kids black history
By JEANNE STARMACK
WARREN
They sat before her on the floor in the children’s section at the public library, where she asked them to put on their “listening ears.”
“Thank you for coming,” said Madonna Chism Pinkard, a self-proclaimed history geek who also happens to be director of community relations for WFMJ/WBCB Television and an adjunct professor at Youngstown State University.
She also has a show, “Community Connection,” which airs at 6:30 a.m. Sundays.
Thursday evening, however, her focus was on connecting with the past for the children who’d gathered in front of her. It was entertainment, yes, but they also would learn for Black History Month that there are many black people in the country’s storied past who overcame a lot of obstacles to make great contributions to society.
She started with a story from the childhood of astronaut Ronald McNair, who at age 35 died on the space shuttle Challenger when it exploded shortly after launch Jan. 28, 1986.
He’ll always be remembered for that. But in his hometown of Lake City, S.C., the public library is now named for him.
The children’s book “Ron’s Big Mission” tells the reason why: In the summer of 1959, McNair one day refused to leave the library unless he was allowed to check out his books. At the time, only white people were allowed to do so. The police and his mother were called. In the end, he won. They let him check out the books.
The second book Chism Pinkard read, “All Different Now,” was written by Angela Johnson of Kent.
Johnson wrote the book as a compilation of stories she heard from her grandmother, who is now 96, Chism Pinkard said.
Honeysuckle blows into a window “to wake us,” she read, as a family of slaves then eats and heads to the fields.
They work picking cotton under the hot Texas sun. A Union general makes an announcement that they are free.
Later that afternoon, the family has a picnic by the water and eats, tells stories and laughs “as a free people.”
The last book she read was the story of a song — “We Shall Overcome.”
Although slavery was abolished, she explained to the kids, white people still shut out black people from good jobs, neighborhoods, schools, restaurants, even lunch counters, pools and drinking fountains.
“Not slaves, but not truly free,” she said.
She said the song “reached the streets” and hundreds of thousands of people black and white took up the cause of equality, but racism persisted.
“So laws were passed,” she said.
She said when a black president finally was elected, “people sang the song in happiness.”
Remembering black history, said Tania McNeely, 12, of Warren, “is very important. “So you know where you came from.”
She, her twin sister, Jayla, and their brother, Darian, 10, said they were glad they’d come to the presentation.
“We’re not what they say we are,” said Jayla. “We’re much more.”
“We are equal,” added Tania. Both said they perceive that racism is still very much a problem.
“I think there should be more things like this to keep the kids more informed of African Americans who definitely contributed to this country,” said their mother, Tanya McNeely.