Black History Month is an important celebration where everyone can come together to talk, share, listen, explore, and learn about the central importance of the black experience in American society.
For this installment, we talked with StockX team member Amie from the customer service team.
The following interview has been lightly edited.
Do you remember your first experience with Black History Month?
I went to a school called Detroit Open School on the west side. It was a predominantly black elementary school so all of our teachers made sure that we all knew our black history. Each student would portray different people from history like someone would be Harriet Tubman, or someone would be Madame C.J. Walker. Everybody would be a different person from black history; that’s how we all learned, learning from each other. In the fourth grade, I switched to a more suburban school and my mom realized the school didn’t really celebrate Black History Month. So my mom started giving the school different resources to try and encourage them to do more to include Black History Month in the curriculum because it’s a part of our country’s history and culture.
How has Black History Month inspired you?
Every February I see a different type of spirit coming from everybody. The spirit will be in music, it can be in art, it can even be in the stores. Just walking down the street, you can feel it. It doesn’t matter what it is or where it is, but I feel like when February hits the spirit is just different and everybody feels it. People acknowledge it by being more open about everything that’s happened in the past and talking about how our history and culture have shaped what’s going on today.
Why do you think Black History Month is so important?
My grandfather marched with Martin Luther King. My grandfather took part in the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk For Peace in 1963. The plan was to walk from Quebec all the way to Cuba. They got stopped in Albany, Georgia. They stopped them in Georgia and took my granddad and everybody else to jail. They went on a hunger strike and fasted for 22 days, no eating, no drinking, nothing. It was basically a death fast. And so the Georgia police were like, “you guys aren’t going to die on our watch cause it’s gonna make us look bad.” So they rushed people to the hospital, they rushed my granddad to the hospital. He was unconscious and the last thing he remembered was just rolling off the gurney. When he woke up, they were shoving a tube down his throat and poured orange juice into him.
I think about that and everything he had to go through and everything that people before him went through. I think about what people after him, like Trayvon Martin, went through and it brings a lot of emotion. My grandmother, she talks about black history every day, because she was in the civil rights movement, too. I love Black History Month.
Why is it important that StockX honors Black History Month?
I feel like a lot of companies don’t really acknowledge Black History Month. You know there are a lot of black people that influence everyday culture and history, you know? I feel like when big companies and corporations want to talk about Black History Month,Ed they talk about the same select group of people. There are so many other people that have done amazing things. I think it’s important to not only acknowledge Black History Month but teach people about all the different ways black people have impacted America. Just not only acknowledgment but just teach people, you know? When big companies like StockX help spread the knowledge, it’s getting to everybody, you know? The history is able to live.
What do you think is Black History Month’s legacy?
It’s going to be even greater, especially after Obama. Like 20 years from now I’ll be able to say, “I was there when Obama was president.” I’ll be able to say that I was there for Michelle Obama, who’s smarter than her husband! I feel like as history goes on, it’s going to get better and we’re going to have more things to include in Black History Month. And then one day it won’t only be just one Black History Month. Maybe we’ll get another month or something like that. I like the fact that there are so many great things about black history and it’s not being ignored, in part, because of Black History Month.
Be sure to check out more of our celebration of Black History Month.
