Black History Month / Valley Retrospective : Perspectives on the Past--and the Future

From the African American who owned much of what is now the San Fernando Valley in the 1790s to the high school student who has devoted himself to keeping his peers out of gangs, people of African descent in the Valley have a long, proud history.

In this special report, we look back at some of that history and--with the help of several voices from the present--turn to the future.

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PACOIMA / Workshops Teach Youth Black Heritage

It’s easy enough to learn a little bit of black history in February, during Black History Month. It’s another matter to learn a lot about it on 27 Saturday mornings throughout the year.

While friends sleep late or tune in a football game, two dozen young students are getting a better glimpse of the missing pages of American history as part of the Saturday Enrichment Program at the Pacoima Community Center, sponsored by the California Black Family Institute.

“It’s not a full-flower course like school,” explained Tammy Warfield, a junior and psychology major at Cal State Northridge who volunteers to tutor the students. “I throw out a couple of names and we talk. In school, they usually learn about Martin Luther King Jr., Sojourner Truth and Malcolm X.”

By the time Warfield finished a recent session, students could add George Washington Carver, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Mary McLeod Bethune, James Weldon Johnson and Duke Ellington to their repertoires.

“In a history book of about 400 pages, they usually might have three or four pages, and that’s on slavery,” Warfield lamented. “Well, our history is more than that. We did some things before and some things after.”

Even through early-morning grogginess and short attention spans, the lessons penetrated. Janet Broadous, whose mother, Deborakh Broadous, helped organize the course, quickly recognized James Weldon Johnson.

“He wrote ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ with his brother,” she said.

“He was a lawyer, a writer, a preacher. . . .” Warfield prompted. “How about Mary McLeod Bethune?”

“She started a college with $1.50,” shouted Vakysha Jackson.

In addition to forming the Florida school that later became Bethune-Cookman College, she founded the National Council of Negro Women.

As an educator and mother, Deborakh Broadous had double motivation to help organize the tutoring sessions. She heard experts say that government programs were not meeting the needs of African Americans, especially children. And African American parents were being told that their children were not performing well in school.

Broadous and fellow CSUN alumni decided to form the California Black Family Institute, based on the institutions they felt were strongest--church and family. “Our Roots Are Our Strength” became the motto of the institute, which offers a variety of counseling and educational programs.

Although students appreciate the institute’s help in English, computer science, mathematics and Spanish, it’s history that seems to bind it together, Broadous said.

“One student said to me, ‘I need this 52 weeks of the year,’ ” she said. “A lot of the kids are not college bound, and we’ve seen them turn around and say: ‘Yeah, I’m going to go to college.’ ”

Vakysha found the tutoring both daunting and inspiring. “Personally, it makes me realize there’s a lot of knowledge I don’t have,” she said. “What they really need to do is teach everyone’s history, then we’d know more about each other. There’d be a lot less violence.”