Feb. 1 marked the beginning of Black History Month, and ETSU’s Black Affairs Association kicked it off with a seminar led by East Tennessee activist Ash-Lee Henderson.
The event was part of the Black Affairs Association’s event series “Unapologetically Black,” and was held via Zoom from 5 to 7 p.m.
“My hope is that you spend the month of February actually demanding what you envision to be the great inheritance of the next generation of Black students, faculty and staff that will come after you,” said Henderson.
Henderson is the co-executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center, which is a social justice leadership training school and cultural center in New Market, Tennessee.
Henderson said she wants people to know about Highlander to help spread its message across East Tennessee and the Southeast.
“It’s a multiracial, multi-ideological, multi-ethnic, multi class, multi-issue space,” said Henderson. “And so it’s taught me a lot about how to interact with differences, how to struggle through differences and how to get to a place of unity to be able to build the kind of world that we deserve.”
Henderson stressed throughout the seminar that Black History Month is more than just one month out of the year and said people needed to learn more about Black history in America because Black history is and was the basis of American history.
Henderson asked the audience to remember the past in order to improve the future for upcoming generations of Black people in the United States.
“Education is set up in a way that actually dismembers black people from their history, and our job as folks of goodwill is to fight for the remembering and the remembrance for the members of that history,” said Henderson. “That’s our obligation.”
To learn more about the “Unapologetically Black” series and the Black Affairs Association, find them on Instagram @blackaffairsetsu, or visit https://www.etsu.edu/students/sao/organizations/baa.php.
