This year was the first year since I graduated from my public school career that I’ve taken intentional steps to learn about Black history during February. I spent maybe 15-20 minutes a day reading the daily emails in the 28 Days of Black History series from Anti-Racism Daily, looking at content posted on Instagram by some of the influencers I follow and looking up the prompts from Rachel Cargle’s Discover Our Glory series. What I learned was challenging, uplifting, heartbreaking, and powerful. I so wish I had learned more about some of these people in the many years of Black History Month curriculum in school; a chance to see the breadth and depth of Black history…which, after all, is American history.

Billie Holiday – Yes I knew who Billie Holiday was before now, I’d listened to her recordings of popular jazz standards. But I’d never heard her sing “Strange Fruit” based on a poem about lynchings in the south. I’d never learned about how the FBI targeted her for her drug use, how her hospital room was raided as she was dying and she was placed under police guard and handcuffed. She had a troubled life, sure, but no one deserves such indignity in death.

Glenn Burke – Co-inventor of the high five! I had never heard the high-five story and for such a ubiquitous gesture, it seems like something I would have known. He was also the first publicly gay player in Major League Baseball and suffered a lot of prejudice because of it. The LA Dodgers even offered him money to get married before trading him to the Oakland As.

Matthew Henson – He was an arctic explorer with Robert Peary and claims to be the first man to reach the geographic North Pole and planted the American flag. He ended up being the first African American to be made a life member of The Explorers Club and was subsequently elevated to the highest level of membership. During his explorations he studied Inuit survival techniques and learned their language.

Florynce Kennedy – Oh man do I wish I had known about this woman earlier. This one is probably due to my own ignorance of the early first wave feminists, but honestly we hear so much about Gloria Steinem and less about Florynce who traveled and lectured alongside her. She was instrumental in the Miss America protest of 1968, founded the Feminist Party and the National Women’s Political Caucus. She came up with the idea to protest the lack of women’s bathrooms at Harvard by pouring fake urine on the front steps of the university’s Lowell Hall. And she did it all wearing a cowboy hat, pink sunglasses, and false eyelashes! This is a woman I wish I had learned about in high school.

Bayard Rustin – Rustin was active and instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement. He helped organize the first of the Freedom Rides and worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr in putting together the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. However, he was distanced from King after a US Representative threatened to leak rumors of a sexual relationship between the two, knowing that Rustin was known to be gay. Rustin still participated in the movement and helped organize the March on Washington. He was not given public credit at the time due to other civil rights leaders seeing his sexuality as a “liability.”

Audre Lorde – As an English major, I’ve read Lorde’s poetry before. It is beautiful and powerful. But this is an example of a writer who has had huge influence on intersectionality, womanism, third wave feminism, and discussions of identity. I am fascinated by her for so much more than her poetry now and I can’t wait to learn more.

This is just a small sampling of the Black historical figures that crossed through my email and social media this month. I am so happy I took the extra time each day to learn and I’m inspired to do more.