Ebony editor calls for action"You don't need a speaker, because the speakin' has been done. You don't need a preacher, because the preachin' has been done," Lerone Bennett, Jr. shouted.
These impassioned opening words to his speech, "The Tradition of Black Excellence," referred to the performance of the Calvin College Gospel Choir and the Oakdale Christian School Choir.
"Thank you for making me realize once again that we are going to make it, that we are one people," Bennett said to the singers, whose renditions of spirituals and hymns had made the audience clap and sway.
The Chief Editor of Ebony magazine since 1987, Bennett is author of the first black history book, Before the Mayflower. His February 20 address, part of the Multicultural year's African American Month, was a call to action for both blacks and whites.
"This is your, our, Black History Month. No American is exempt," Bennett said fervently. "I'm not talking about civil rights. I'm talking about our abiding responsibility to teach and learn what we know about truth."
Bennett stated how important it is to tell the black story, the story that has not been told. He gave an example close to home: the first non-Indian settler of Chicago, he said, was Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, a black man. Yet, "it's the biggest secret in Chicago"-- not a single street in the city is named for Du Sable. Bennett called this a conspiracy of silence, since a group of African-Americans brought the matter to the city council and were turned away.
"One of our black problems is that we black people don't know who we are," Bennett continued. "Black Americans are products of the greatest tradition of excellence the U.S.A. has ever known."
When blacks first came out of slavery, he explained, they had such an enormous hunger to learn that black children didn't want to leave school. Now, he said, many blacks don't respect education. "We are reviving, not creating, the black tradition of excellence." He added that black excellence in basketball is not enough-- there must be black excellence in economics and science too.
Bennett's remarks then became more personally directed to the Calvin College community. He heard, he said, that black people at Calvin walk right by each other without saying "hello."
"Let's go back in our generation and reinstitutionalize the oldtime southern black spirit," he said, "a time when every black person spoke to every other black person."
In closing Bennett asked, alluding to the Hebrew poet,"Can we get a witness? A witness to 1000 students? 10,000 students? 100,000 students"
He added, "If not now, then when?"
by Roxanne Rupke
