The Crane Center celebrates Black History Month 2022!

Black History Month dates back to 1926 when Dr. Carter G. Woodson first founded a week to draw attention to the largely overlooked Black contributions in American history. Today Black History Month continues to highlight and celebrate these contributions, and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History sets an annual theme. This year is focused on Black Health and Wellness.

Here at the Crane and Schoenbaum Centers, Black History Month offerings and learning opportunities are varied:

  • Latoya Jackson, OSU Early Head Start Education Specialist, launched a monthly series of culturally diverse and racially affirming books with activities that are both teacher and family friendly.
  • Sophie Rogers educators recorded book read-alouds that celebrate Black authors and characters.
  • The Same or Different: Stories About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion project allowed children to discuss and examine the size, shape, and color of teachers’ and students’ hands in our A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning.
  • Teachers Whytnie Strain, Kim Davis, and Lacey Stillings created a poster highlighting activities, books, and personal stories to celebrate Black History Month all year long.
  • OSU’s College of Education and Human Ecology hosted a lecture with Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize winning creator of The 1619 Project.

Beyond these celebrations, we are also committed to ensuring Black contributions and culture are interwoven into our day-to-day work. This involves examining and understanding where inequities exist across research, practice, and policy and committing to culturally competent and racially affirming practices. Highlighting this work is harder because it happens moment-by-moment, whether at the front door of our A. Sophie Rogers School between a parent and a teacher during drop-off, by examining research for anti-racist design, or in the professional development our staff choose for themselves. Black History Month is indeed a celebration but also a clarion call to embrace education and self-awareness.

“Black History Month shouldn’t be treated as though it is somehow separate from our collective American history or somehow just boiled down to a compilation of greatest hits… It’s about the lived, shared experience of all African Americans, high and low, famous and obscure, and how those experiences have shaped and challenged and ultimately strengthened America.”

– President Obama in a February 2016 message