Black History Month

Here is a profile of a man who drove vice presidents and governors, wealthy landowners, visiting artists, and the prominent of Bloomington-Normal all about town more than a century ago.

During Black History Month, this episode of McHistory shows you the working life of Absalom Hawkins, a well-known African American man in the Twin Cities. It also tells you about a 19th century brain drain of African Americans.

Those who became educated had to leave the area to get jobs outside the working class. 

Discovering your true identity is one of life's greatest quests. History plays a role in connecting the dots, but for African American students, the lack of information taught on their culture could leave some starving for a sense of self.

It is a cruel irony that the first Christian church in what is now the country of Ghana is built in a coastal fort directly over the holding pens for the slave trade.

In the era of Jim Crow laws, enforced racial segregation kept blacks and whites separate at restaurants, in bathrooms, and in education.

"Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

That famous quote attributed to Edmund Burke, a one-time orator, political theorist and British member of parliament, is behind a new effort at Bloomington's oldest park.

The teaching of America's multicultural history has come a long way from the largely white, Euro-centric version students were taught for decades. Most of that progress has been at the university level.