Black History Month 2020: a reflection
As I approach the end of my Black History Month activities this weekend, this allows me to reflect on what this month has meant to my community — Rockford, IL — and what it means for the thousands of people who consider me a leader in understanding and sharing who we are as people of African descent.
As a creative writer, performer, and a researcher, it has been an honor to write about and learn about the people of whom’s shoulders I stand upon. It is my duty as an intellect and researcher to share this information.
I have spent hours and hours studying, reading, and writing about the culture and collective conscious of Black folk, my people. I was encouraged to do so by mentors and by teachers I had in school.
This collective knowledge that I have gained wants to get of me, wants to be heard and be seen by those who will benefit from it. Knowledge is energy to it. When you gain knowledge it will find ways to get out of you to be experienced by audiences and what we Black folk call “the village.”
It is the village who I owe my work to. Whether it is a poem, a collage of my experiences or events, or maybe an essay. The village is watching, waiting to be educated or informed.
So I write, I type, I listen, I learn. Especially for the young people who are an integral part of the village. They will carry on what they are learning to educate the communities they live in, or will travel through.
As I’m introduced on stage as “the poet Christopher D. Sims” I embark on a new journey of sharing the knowledge I have gained about Black people with purpose and power.
It is my lineage that empowers me; it is also writers like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou and Alice Walker who empower me as well. I wrote in the cannon of truth telling and historical poetry that gathers the wisdom of the ancestors to speak through me.
I hope we can all reflect about Black History Month in this last day of February and realize how much Black folks have brought to this country, to North America, and beyond. We owe it to ourselves and those who will come after us.
I am Black and I am proud. I’ll continue to say it loud!
Happy Black History Month!
