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Black History Month should educate children about their roots – Kaunda

Black History Month should educate children about their roots – Kaunda
By Masuzyo Chakwe
Sun 07 Feb. 2010, 07:10 CAT

DR KENNETH Kaunda has said Black History month should serve to educate children about their history as a people.

During the commemoration of the Black History Month on Friday at Lusaka National Museum, Dr Kaunda who is Zambia’s first president said it should also serve to remind people of their responsibility to teach children in schools about history and the umbilical links with the Africans outside the continent and the circumstances under which they left their ancestral land.

“We live in an interdependent world, Indeed a fast globalising world. A world in which competing national interests take pride of place, yet this world needs international cooperation and understanding to enhance peace. Yet this world needs multilateral collaboration for the good of humanity. Let the Black History Month remind us of the importance of working together for the attainment of global peace, economic and socio development,” he said.

Dr Kaunda said there was need to work together to fight poverty and underdevelopment.

“We need to work together to fight illiteracy, diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and AIDS. We need to work together towards the attainment of prosperity for all,” he said.

Dr Kaunda said although slavery was abolished during the 1860s, black Americans continued to suffer racial discrimination and other forms of oppression and injustice.

“Yes, for a long time, nothing much changed in the lives of the freed slaves. As the old adage goes ‘Bad habits die hard’. It had to take a protracted struggle and concerted efforts by courageous men and women to fight for liberty, freedom, justice and dignity,” he said.

He said in that struggle history had recorded many heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives so that Americans of all races could live in peace and harmony.

Dr Kaunda named some of the heroes as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Junior.

He said he had the privilege of meeting Dr King Jnr in 1962, with whom he held an insightful discussion on the struggle for justice not only in America but also on the freedom struggle in Africa.

Dr Kaunda said he viewed him as he did today to be one of the greatest statesmen of the world.

He said Africans fought colonialism and apartheid so that all races could live together in peace and harmony.

“Indeed so that our succeeding generation can enjoy peace as they develop our nations to greater prosperity,” he said.

Dr Kaunda said he believed Black History month served as an important purpose to remind people about the need to live together in harmony.

Black History Month has been on the calendar in the United States of America since 1926, then referred to as Negro history week.

An idea initiated by Carter G Woodson, a noted African American historian, scholar, educator and publisher, it became a month long celebration in 1976.

Labels: BLACK HISTORY MONTH, EDUCATION, KENNETH KAUNDA

posted by MrK @ 3:00 PM