Black History Month - WASHINGTON – Author and activist Maya Angelou hopes for a time when Black History Month will no longer be needed to explain the contributions of African-Americans. "We want to reach a time when there won't be Black History Month, when black history ...

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH
POSTED BY EIZ ON THURSDAY, 19 JANUARY, 2012, 7:14 AM
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WASHINGTON – Author and activist Maya Angelou hopes for a time when Black History Month will
no longer be needed to explain the contributions of African-Americans. "We want to reach a time
when there won't be Black History Month, when black history ...
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BLACK HISTORY MONTH
POSTED BYO EIZ N THURSDAY, 19 JANUARY, 2012, 7:14 AM
Published February 02, 2012| Associated
Press P r i n t E m a i l S h a r e C o m m e n t s
Tweet inShare0 Text Size WASHINGTON –
Author and activist Maya Angelou hopes
for a time when Black History Month will no
longer be needed to explain the
contributions of African-Americans.
"We want to reach a time when there won't
be Black History Month, when black history
will be so integrated into American history
that we study it along with every other
history," she said in an interview from her
home in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Wednesday. "That's the hope, and we have to continue to work
until that is true, until that becomes a fact."
Angelou is hosting an hour-long syndicated radio special on the civil rights era that will air
throughout this month on about 200 public radio stations across the country. Her special features
Grammy award-winning singer Mary J. Blige, Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, former U.N.
Ambassador Andrew Young, economist and Bennett College President Julianne Malveaux, and
professor Nikky Finney, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for poetry.
"Our work still remains and we have to do the best we can do," she said. "The young people have a
charge to keep, they have responsibility and some don't know that, or maybe some have heard it
but don't recognize it."
The program details Lewis' work as a Freedom Rider, Finney's tribute to late civil rights activist
Rosa Parks, Young's rise from small-town pastor to ambassador and Malveaux's involvement with
the Black Panther movement in her youth.
The work and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. are also discussed in detail. Angelou, who vocally
denounced a truncated inscription of a King quote at his new memorial in Washington as taking
the slain leader's words out of context, said she was pleased to hear it will be changed by the
National Park Service.
"The artists — the sculptor and the architect — had the right to put on their work what they wanted