Students Urged to Remember Examples of Past

Cal State Northridge celebrated the 75th anniversary of Black History Month on Thursday with music, dance and inspirational speeches encouraging students to reach their highest potential and put their feelings into action.

“Our responsibility, as faculty and students, is to empower you to shatter glass ceilings, climb corporate ladders and be people who sit in control of decision-making,” said Rosentene Purnell, interim head of CSUN’s Pan African Studies Department. “Be a voice for the voiceless. Be serious about developing your life. And always be the best that you can be.”

Speakers urged the audience to remember the struggles of those who gave their energy--and sometimes their lives--to improve the lives of contemporary African Americans.

“It’s important that we take what we know and give back to the community,” said Joe Lewis, art department chairman. “You should reach out to youth and your elders. Give back what has been given to you.”

CSUN, which has about 2,000 African American students accounting for 7.5% of its enrollment, has nearly two dozen events planned in February to commemorate Black History Month.

Thursday’s 1 1/2-hour opening ceremony featured soloist Quanita Cain, who sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and Up From the Roots, a Pomona-based drum and dance troupe. Students were encouraged to join in the lively dancing, but only one person did.

Wearing a gray sweatsuit, in stark contrast to the dancers’ colorful dresses, freshman Tomisha Young ran in front of the stage and did an impromptu dance.

“If you feel it, you just do it,” she said, adding that Black History Month is worth celebrating because “everybody needs to know about it.”

The event’s most somber portion, the “libation ceremony,” honored the deceased “who have paved a way for us,” Pan African Studies Professor Faola Ifayboyede told the gathering.

Tapping a stick on a table, she called out the names of famous and lesser-known blacks. After each name was said, the audience responded by saying “Ashe” (pronounced “ah-shay”), a West African Yoruba word meaning “Amen.”

The lengthy list included such people as Malcolm X, Louis Armstrong and Harriett Tubman, as well as “those who died on slave plantations, those who were lynched and those who were [hanged].”

Near the end of the ceremony, the audience members had a chance to express their views.

“Why celebrate Black History Month? If it had not been for our ancestors, there would be no reason,” said Camille Hill, 55, a Pan African Studies major who will finish her bachelor’s degree this spring--the first of her family to do so. “We must keep the doors open so your children and their children will not have to fight as hard as we are fighting.”