What to Know: Texans celebrated Black History Month in February; Lt. Col. Allen West (retired) participated at an event in East Texas.
“Joan Hubert, a Texas Southern University music professor, spoke about tracing her family lineage to the slaves who worked on Roseland Plantation,” the Tyler Paper reports. “Hubert said she spent the past 30 years researching her ancestry. She said she discovered her ties to the plantation through talking to relatives and coming to Roseland, where she discovered she was the great-great-great-grandniece of a woman listed as one of the original plantation owner’s slaves. She said she finally felt like she had roots when she was able to trace the woman's history to Madagascar.”
The TPPF Take: West read from Booker T. Washington’s famous “Cast Down Your Bucket” speech, and spoke of how Washington valued education and self-reliance above victimhood.
“Booker T. Washington, a former slave who became an advisor to presidents, knew that education and honest labor would put his race on an equal footing with whites,” says West, who leads TPPF’s Booker T. Washington Initiative. “He also focused on unity—something we need more of today, in a time when so many forces are trying to divide us.” | |