To the Editor:
Black History Month
GAMBIER – This year's Black History Month gives us a rare opportunity to truly reflect on the implications of that history and how it can inform our actions today. It is simply not enough to reminisce about Hank Aaron, Toni Morrison and George Washington Carver when the wounds inflicted on Black Americans have neither been fully healed or even sufficiently acknowledged.
Far from being history, this very day political leaders are exploiting the lie that Black voters commit massive voter fraud and stole an election to justify voter suppression and erecting more barriers to civic participation. It's a chilling echo of the same lie perpetrated after the Civil War that led to decades of oppression.
The pandemic's undue impact on Black Americans and their unequal access to the vaccine exposes how inequality is not something to be found in history books but rather in today's newspapers, and it reflects the long history of medical neglect and health inequality suffered by fellow Americans who are often at the frontline protecting the rest of us.
I had the humbling honor to speak at the Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast and we heard a lot of hopeful words about reconciliation, but unless those words are rooted in truth and implemented in actions they will do little good. Future generations will know us by our fruits. Let us use this time wisely and justly.
Leeman Kessler
Mayor of Gambier
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