Black History Month: Jean Stallings

"This book has been in my family for nearly 100 years and represents a time when education was not available to all children. It was my uncle who was longing to read and who was given this by a white person on the land where he picked cotton as a boy. He was never able to attend school because he was placed in the fields to help work for his family's wages. My mother remembers all her brothers sharing this book to look at the pictures and to learn. My uncle wrote his name throughout the pages: Willie Moses Bates. It was his way of practicing his writing."I laugh when I think of what I told my mother years ago: “Thank God he could not read the negative remarks about Native Americans and slaves in the book.” It was written in 1899 by the daughter of a Confederate general, and the way it speaks about people is not a way we're proud to read about. One passage describes life in the South of the United States by saying: "People in the South were more lively than in the North. Plantation owners lived in large houses with cabins for the slaves nearby. They were kind to strangers, always had their houses full of visitors and did not feel they were committing a sin by having slaves. But many Northern people were holding them up to the world as great sinners.”"I know that the perseverance and hope and faith that my uncle had is in families in poverty in Africa and in every part of the world. I trust that the message of hope and strength continues and that people think of my relatives, who could not read, but inspired the next generation of people to continue to strive toward higher education." This February we've been asking folks to share what Black History Month means to them, and how it relates to their family or their community. If you'd like to share your thoughts, send us a message. #BlackHistoryMonth