DCDL helping patrons celebrate Black History Month – Delaware Gazette

McDaniel-Browning
February is Black History Month! Beginning in 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month, an annual celebration of the achievements and recognition of the struggles of African Americans. Black History Month grew out of Negro History week, the creation of Carter G. Woodson. Woodson was the second Black American to receive a PhD in history from Harvard, and he was determined to ensure that school children learn Black history.
This year’s theme is African Americans and Labor, focusing on the ways that work intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. From the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans, to entrepreneurship in Black communities, to leadership in corporations and politics, the work of African Americans has been central to much of Black history and culture – and to America itself.
While we’re more than halfway through the month, there are still ways to celebrate.
Our digital partner Hoopla offers music, audiobooks, e-books and more, all celebrating Black heroes and the civil rights movement. You can find the collection at https://www.hoopladigital.com/collection/14837. If films are more your speed, our partner Kanopy offers a wide range of films and documentaries honoring Black History Month; all are free to stream with your Library card. Browse the collection at https://www.kanopy.com/en/delawarelibrary/category/40898.
DCDL has two upcoming Book Club meetings featuring great books by Black authors. Join us on Thursday, Feb. 20, at Orange Library for “The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster” by Shauna Robinson, or on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at Delaware Library for “Vagabonds!” by Eloghosa Osunde.
Can’t make it (or don’t have enough time to read those before the book club meeting)? No problem! DCDL librarians have curated wonderful recommended reading lists for kids, teens, and adults celebrating black authors and characters. Visit our Black History Month page at https://www.delawarelibrary.org/news/black-history-month/ for links to these lists along with many other learning resources.
DCDL is proud to recognize the achievements and history of generations of African Americans, who have helped shape our community, state, country, and world. Interested in learning more? Try one of these phenomenal non-fiction books by Black authors and historians.
• “Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books that Saved Me” by Glory Edim. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, but her love of books stretches far back. As a child, she found a safe space – and community — at her local library, where she found the books of Black writers whose words would forever change her life.
• “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America,” 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi. This book gathers eighty black writers from all disciplines – historians, artists, journalists and novelists — each of whom has contributed an entry about one five-year period through the 400th anniversary of the first African presence in the Americas. The results is a dynamic, multi-voiced single-volume history of black people in America.
• “We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance” by Kellie Carter Jackson. Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s ‘by any means necessary.’ In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of responses to oppression.
• “American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky” by Sherri L. Smith and Elizabeth Wein. This is the incredible and true account of a group of determined Black Americans who created a flying club and built their own airfield on Chicago’s South Side in the period between World Wars I and II.
• “I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free” by Lee Hawkins. Hawkins, a musician, host of the podcast “What Happened in Alabama?,” and Pulitzer Prize finalist, turns to memoir to trace a harrowing and intimate family story. His story is deeply reflective and shares the trauma he experienced throughout his life as a Black man living in a post-civil rights movement world.
If you have a question that you would like to see answered in this column, mail it to Jayna McDaniel-Browning, Delaware County District Library, 84 E. Winter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call us at 740-362-3861. You can also email your questions by visiting the library’s web site at www.delawarelibrary.org or directly to Jayna at [email protected]. No matter how you contact us, we’re always glad you asked!

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