It's Black History Month!
I have conflicting thoughts about Black History Month and have since I was in high school. But my boys have been learning about famous African Americans in school and seem to enjoy it, and some neighbors hosted a "Black History Month" costume party at their house this weekend, so I've been getting into it more than usual, for the kids' sake.
I agonized over what to have the children be for their costumes, because I didn't want to buy anything, really, and I also didn't want to be so Martin Luther King/ Rosa Parks obvious.
In the end, we decided to have Dean be Thurgood Marshall, because he's a truly great historical figure (hello, Brown vs. Board of Ed) and he's from Baltimore. Holla!
And we opted to have Cary be Tommie Smith, who is more famous for this iconic picture (a favorite of my Dad's) than he is for what he actually did, which was to win the gold medal in the 200-meter dash in the 1968 Olympics.
With the help of my Mom, who quickly pulled together two pieces of black fabric for a judge's robe, a store-bought gavel and mustache and one of Lester's ties, we turned Dean into the first black Supreme Court justice.
And with a University of Maryland track jacket and pants (which once belonged to Russy) that we plastered over with hand-drawn "USA" patches, an American flag from the dollar store, an old medal we had hanging around from one of Lester's work events and a black glove, we turned Cary into one of the most enduring, and controversial, symbols of the 1960s black power movement.
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Cary thought being in costume meant he had to scare people. So he kept going up to folks at the party, talking like Cookie Monster and pretending to eat them. Dean was too focused on not tripping over his judge's robe to do much else.
But they had fun listening to the African storyteller (Maria Broom, of The Wire, which was really cool!) and playing with all the other African-American greats-in-miniature. And I'm glad now I put my silly issues aside, and didn't blow this off.
