The benefits of “Black History Month,” in February each year not only highlights the contributions that African Americans have made to society, but also articulates the struggles that Black Americans have endured since their arrival in bondage. Dating back to an educated slave named Nat Turner, who was considered to be a “prophet” by the time he led the slave revolution at North Hampton, VA in 1831, the debate had been, “What is the best strategy for the progress of the Negro?” It is said that Nat Turner’s eloquent debates among the slaves and white abolitionists advocating for the freedom of the slave, complimented by John Brown’s slave revolution in 1859 at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, led directly to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing the slaves.

At the turn of the 20th century, 1895 to 1910, there was “The Great Debate” among Negroes on the strategy for the progress of the Negro, which pitted Dr. W.E.B. Dubois, founder of the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, against Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute and designated spokesman for the Negro at that time. Washington’s philosophy was that the Negro should remain an efficient worker in the trades and skills, and through the ownership of capital, achieve a recognized place in American society. Dr. Dubois, a PhD. from Harvard University, believed in higher education and that through modern culture, the Negro would be taken to a higher civilization. The debate was fierce and in 1905 in Buffalo, NY, Dubois founded the Niagara Movement to renounce Washington’s accommodation policies. In 1908 with 30 chapters, the Niagara Movement was joined by white liberals to become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
One of those white liberal founders of the NAACP was Joel Spingarn, famed by the NAACP ‘s highest award, the Spingarn Medal. I graduated from Spingarn High School in Washington, DC as well as two of America’s top ten basketball players, Elgin Baylor of the Los Angeles Lakers and Dave Bing of the Detroit Pistons. Baseball’s Maury Wills, record holding base stealer with the Los Angeles Angels and even John Thompson, reportedly America’s greatest basketball coach at Georgetown University, also got their training under Spingarn’s legendary coach, Dave Brown.

Now, fast forwarding to the turn of the 21st century as the Negro became Colored, then Black and now African American, there is another “Great Debate” beginning in 1995 to 2005, “affirmative action.” This time the debate was primarily among politically powerful white men with one or two Black men as pawns, that preached that affirmative action is an unearned preference and that American society is now color blind. Yet, African Americans remain a long way from parity, suffering unemployment twice as high as the rest of the country and standing on the lowest rung of every ladder of progress.
Some believe the answer simply lies with the Black Nation, the 9th largest economy in the world, spending substantially more than 3% of its $726 billion annual earnings with its own Black businesses. The debate continues…

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