Black History Month for me is an emotionally mixed bag. On one hand I feel great pride in having a month dedicated to celebrating my heritage. It is during this time that the strong black voices of our past are remembered and uplifted. However, early childhood experiences with black history lessons taught in the classroom negatively shaped my self image for years. As an adolescent black female raised in a predominantly white middle class community in the mid 1980s, classroom discussions of black history were anxiety-ridden, eye-twitching events. Back then, black history was minimized to just...