Taking the Kids: Celebrating Black History Month - from home

Eileen Ogintz, Tribune Content Agency on Feb 4, 2021

Greensboro, N.C., is where four Black students took a stand against discrimination in 1960 by refusing to move from the J.W. Woolworth’s lunch counter, sparking the nationwide sit-in movement. The original Woolworth’s building — and the lunch counter — has become the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, now offering online and on-site tours.

Though currently closed, you can virtually visit the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kansas, which ended legal discrimination in public schools when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The Monroe Elementary School and its playgrounds, now part of the NPS historic site, was one of the segregated black schools represented in the landmark case.

The robust Digital Resources Guide at the National Museum of African American History and Culture website enables you to explore the museum while it is closed and engage with learning labs created by the museum’s education specialists. Explore how African Americans are portrayed in popular media through the Black Panther and Black Superheroes learning lab. Hear the stories of many unsung heroes online, thanks to the Civil Rights History Project, a joint initiative by the museum and the Library of Congress.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that,” Dr. King said in one of his sermons later collected in his “Strength to Love” book and now engraved on his memorial.

Dr. King’s wise words couldn’t be timelier. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he wrote from the Birmingham, Alabama, jail in 1963. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

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(For more Taking the Kids, visit www.takingthekids.com and also follow TakingTheKids on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where Eileen Ogintz welcomes your questions and comments. The Kid’s Guide to Philadelphia, the 13th in the kid’s guide series, was published in 2020, with The Kid’s Guide to Camping coming in 2021.)