Black History Transcends One Month; Especially When It Is Repeating Itself...

The Esperanza A. Moreno Regional Library gave tribute to Black History Month by creating a display that is located in the entrance of the lobby. 

The black and white photographs that are displayed are not only photographs during the Civil Rights Movement, but are also photographs of the current state of racial divide in America. The dates of these photographs are not easily differentiated due to the same type of content and issues that remain present.

The small sheets of paper are mini memorials for those who have died due to racial injustice within these past five years, as well as those who have lost their lives fighting for racial justice. The small placards include the victim's name, age they died, and the date they lost their life. Some names include: Mike Brown (18), Trayvon Martin (17), Emmett Till (14), Tamir Rice (12), Alyana Jones (7), Sandra Bland (28), and so many more...

The colored photographs are pictures of famous pioneers throughout history, including: Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, President Barack Obama, Rosa Parks, and Angela Davis. 

Speaking of Angela Davis...

On Wednesday, 7 February 2018, Dr. Angela Davis was a guest speaker at UTEP as part of their African American Studies Program's Lecture Series. Public Services Librarian, Crystal H., was able to attend and represent for the El Paso Public Library.

Angela Davis, activist, educator, scholar, and politician, was born on January 26, 1944, in the “Dynamite Hill” area of Birmingham, Alabama.  The area received that name because so many African American homes in this middle class neighborhood had been bombed over the years by the Ku Klux Klan.  Her father, Frank Davis, was a service station owner and her mother, Sallye Davis, was an elementary school teacher.  Davis’s mother was also active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), when it was dangerous to be openly associated with the organization because of its civil rights activities.  As a teenager Davis moved to New York City with her mother, who was pursuing a Master’s degree at New York University.  While there she attended Elizabeth Irwin High School, a school considered leftist because a number of its teachers were blacklisted during the McCarthy era for their earlier alleged Communist activities.

In 1961 Davis enrolled in Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. While at Brandeis, Davis also studied abroad for a year in France and returned to the U.S. to complete her studies, joining Phi Beta Kappa and earning her B.A. (magna cum laude) in 1965.  Even before her graduation, Davis, so moved by the deaths of the four girls killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in her hometown in 1963, that she decided to join the civil rights movement.  By 1967, however, Davis was influenced by Black Power advocates and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and then the Black Panther Party.  She also continued her education, earning an M.A. from the University of California at San Diego in 1968.  Davis moved further to the left in the same year when she became a member of the American Communist Party.

In 1969 Angela Davis was hired by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) as an assistant professor of philosophy, but her involvement in the Communist Party led to her dismissal. http://www.blackpast.org/aah/davis-angela-1944-0

Davis' placement on the FBI's watch list was highly controversial. In 1970, the former philosophy professor was charged with murder and kidnapping, leading to her evasion of the police and being put on the most wanted list. But as The New York Times reported a day after her arrest, "The charges against Miss Davis do not allege that she was at the scene of the kidnap-murders...Miss Davis was charged under a California law that makes an accomplice equally guilty for having purchased the guns used." The guns in question were used for a courthouse kidnapping during the trial of the Soledad Brothers' – George L Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Wesley Clutchette, accused of killing a white guard Soledad prison – that left four dead, including a judge. She was acquitted in 1972 and cleared of all charges, going on to become a famed political activist, prisoners' rights advocate, and influential scholar in her post at the  University of California Santa Cruz.  https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/pictures/fbi-adds-10th-woman-to-most-wanted-list-meet-them-all-20160630/angela-yvonne-davis-20160630