Public Employee Press

Black History Month at DC 37
Part 1: events from Feb. 2- Feb. 12, 2009
A legacy of hope

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

In a year of special significance, the DC37 Black History Committee celebrated “A Legacy of Hope” at its annual February Black History Month observance.

The month-long celebration recalled African Americans’ hard-fought struggles for equality that climaxed during the 1960s civil rights era as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, asking America to envision itself as a nation that would accept people based on character and not skin color. Forty-six years later the nation and the world watched the triumphant inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. president and first African American president of the United States.

“We have witnessed what few of us believed would ever happen in our lifetime,” said DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray. “But there still is a way to go. We celebrate Black History Month with the understanding that Black history is American history.”

The Feb. 2 ribbon-cutting and opening-night ceremony was co-sponsored by the Committee and Locals 1113 and 2627, whose presidents Deborah Pitts and Robert Ajaye are the BHC co-chairs. The committee honored Cynthia Chin-Marshall, who served as co-chair for more than 20 years, and its past chair, the late Kevin D. Smith, who served as Local 1655 president, PEOPLE chair and a DC 37 vice president.

The photos on these pages were taken on opening night and at programs held over the next two weeks by locals 983, 371 and 1407, the Retirees Association and the Political Action Committee. See page 16 for Family Day.

Opening night featured LA Simply Skins, a multiracial drumming company, a libation and blessing by Togba Porte, Local 420 2nd vice president and vice president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and guest speaker AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy, a human rights trailblazer who founded CBTU, led the U.S. anti-apartheid movement to free Nelson Mandela and was the first labor leader to endorse Obama for president.

“This is a special time, it’s Obama time, an idea whose time has come. It is a time of reflection on African American achievements and contributions to the growth and development of our nation,” Lucy said.

“In spite of all the challenges we’ve faced as a people,” Lucy said, “this still is the greatest nation on earth, because it is founded on the brilliant concepts of freedom of worship, liberty, and opportunity.”