[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 27 (Tuesday, February 26, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S848-S849]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BLACK HISTORY MONTH

  Mr. BROWN. Throughout this month, students across my State, across 
Ohio, are reciting speeches by Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and 
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to commemorate Black History Month.
  Dr. Carter Woodson started what was originally called Negro History 
Week in February between the birthdays of President Abraham Lincoln and 
Frederick Douglass. Dr. Woodson initiated the weeklong tribute to 
incorporate the legacies, images, and historical contributions of 
African Americans into the greater American story.
  Today, people throughout the United States celebrate African-American 
History Month to ensure all American stories are recognized. Ohio has 
been the scene for which many of these chapters were written.
  In Mount Pleasant, OH, the first antislavery gazette newspaper in the 
United States, the Philanthropist, was published in 1817. The Ohio 
Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Zanesville in 1835. My home State 
has played a rich role in American history, as have so many Ohioans.
  Every new U.S. passport includes the words of a formerly enslaved 
Oberlin College graduate Dr. Anna Julia Cooper. If you have a passport, 
you will see her words:

       The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, 
     a party or a class--it is the cause of humankind, the very 
     birthright of humanity.

  In Yellow Springs, OH, a young music student at Antioch College, 
Coretta Scott, would later work alongside her husband, Dr. Martin 
Luther King, for social and economic justice in our country.
  Former Wilberforce University student Bayard Rustin was the lead 
strategist of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
  The only living American with a Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni 
Morrison, was born and raised in Lorain, OH.
  Akronite Rita Dove served as the Poet Laureate of the United States.
  Today, in classrooms and communities across the State--and across the 
Nation--the next generation of Ohioans is starting to make its mark on 
American history.

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