Tom Adams
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As Black History Month comes to an end, and hopefully we plan to continue learning and acting for racial justice, this week’s post reflects on the many possible ways to take action for racial justice. Reading and knowledge are suggested, yet not enough.
This month I am exploring ways to pay attention to Black History. Everyone’s history is everyone’s history if we are all one and equal. Given the difficulty we have had learning accurate Black History, being intentional for a month (or a lifetime) about learning is essential to deepening understanding and advancing equity.
Last week’s post made the case that paying attention to Black History Month is more important than ever. And it is important for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, or politics. This week I will explore some of the many types of learning opportunities, and what I am learning from a couple of examples.
February and Black History Month have arrived. Given the polarized condition of race relations in America, paying attention to the gifts and opportunities that this annual celebration feels more important than ever to me. The next four posts will focus on some aspects of learning and understanding Black History, and an exploration of what we individually and collectively might learn and do to advance “liberty and justice for all.”
Last week’s post celebrated the wedding anniversary of Bill and Lois Wilson, co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (Bill) and Al-Anon Family Groups (Lois). We looked at their life and legacy from the point of view of our national aspirations of “liberty and justice for all”. We explored how many people today are free from the hell of alcohol, drugs, and other addictions because of the Twelve Step movement the Wilsons and others pioneered.
Yesterday our nation celebrated the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This year the federal holiday coincided with Dr. King’s actual birthday, January 15, 1929. In five years, it will be one hundred years since Dr. King was born and fifty-six years since he was killed on April 4, 1968, in Memphis TN working for labor rights for sanitation workers.
As a consultant who works with nonprofit organizations, I have a specific interest in succession and in seeing organizations becoming more equitable. A word that we often hear in this work is leadership. This word, for me, has some deep, almost ancestral resonance while at the same time making me a little uneasy.
I find myself appalled at the latest mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. The horror of so many people innocently gunned down in a bowling alley and restaurant sends terror to my heart. I couldn’t help but think on the way to the store last night that no one is safe any place.
TJ Klune writes in “The House in the Cerulean Sea” about magical children who are segregated from society because their differences are seen as dangerous and in need of regulation and prescribed assimilation. Thomas Page McBee writes in Amateur, a memoir of his journey as a transgender male: “It is not easy to face the long shadow of assimilation in the United States, which is as old as the nation itself. It is so much a part of our national history to pretend to be what we are not in our striving that many of us no longer see what we have lost.”
The Whitney Museum in southern Louisiana focuses extensively on the experience of enslaved people rather than glorifying the slave-owning “masters.” In this post, I want to share some of what my husband Henry and I learned from our tour guide about the experience for the enslaved community at this one of over 46,300 US plantations that were in existence in 1860.
Tom Adams writes and speaks on topics vital to the intersection of our personal lives with our community and global lives. He has for decades been engaged in and written about nonprofit leadership and transitions, spirituality and spiritual growth, how we each contribute to a more just and equitable world and recovery from addictions and the Twelve Step recovery movement.