By Steve Keenan
The Montgomery Herald
MONTGOMERY — To commemorate Black History Month in late February, Bridgemont Community and Technical College staged a cultural diversity event on campus.
Part of the reason for the necessity of such events, says Todd McFadden, is “to get to the core of the issues. The object is that we learn. ”
McFadden, the associate director of the WVU Center for Black Culture and Research, discussed such prominent black figures as Dr. Carter Woodson, who founded what is now known as Black History Month, and Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist who was an early leader in the civil rights movement. According to www.wikipedia.org, Wells documented the extent of lynching in the United States, in addition to being active in the women’s rights movement and the women’s suffrage movement. “This lady was quite defiant,” said McFadden, who mentioned Woodson and Wells as “particular heroes” of his.
During his appearance, McFadden invited audience participation. In one instance, he asked those in attendance a question about slaves leaving their home country for the United States. No slaves left Africa, he stressed, to arrive in another country. “The difference for the ones here was not what was done to them but what was taken away,” said McFadden. “Slavery has nothing to do with chains; it’s psychological.”
It’s important to understand and learn about and from others, he said.
McFadden was previously director of the Africana Center at Tufts University in Boston. He is also the newly-elected vice president of the WVU Black Faculty Association and was just elected as vice president for the national Association for Black Culture Centers.
His appearance was funded by a grant from the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission/Community and Technical College System’s 2009-10 cultural diversity program series.
