Upholding an honored tradition

Ben Guest Assignment: Free Write

In 1974 Americans began celebrating Black History Month, a remembrance of the events in the history of the African diaspora, and in 2011 North Panola High School celebrated this commemorative month by making a mockery of it. Things got off to a rough start as the two hour long assembly opened with the singing of the national anthem, and they only got worse from there. Aside from the three girls on stage who were actually singing, no one took it seriously, and many refused to even stand.

Mr. Darnell's spanish class had put together a video of "I Have a Dream" being read in spanish. The audience was too amused to listen to the words or read the subtitles. They laughed and pointed, and the concept of the presentation was completely lost on them. They failed to see how important and relevant the words of Martin Luther King Jr. were to their lives. It was both visually pleasing and well executed, but our students just lacked the sophistication for it.

Following the video presentation, Mr. Jones got up to sing a rendition of "Precious Lord." Now, it takes a lot to perform solo in front of an audience; it takes a real something special to want to sing in front of our entire student body. Mr. Jones did an excellent job, both with the singing and ignoring the laughter. A slideshow of pictures from MLK's life played in the background, but once again our students were unmoved.

Both of the previous acts were actual efforts, efforts that would have gone over amazingly well had they been presented to a different audience, but the real crown jewel of the assembly was the skit involving the selling of slaves that the students had directed and performed. J.T. White played auctioneer, as Matt Holloway yelled a lot while purchasing his peers who were dressed in slave attire. The slaves each rebelled or tried to escape as they were being sold, but this was only met with more yelling and a belt-lashing. It was a crude depiction of slavery, and not in the way that makes you think about how awful slavery is. I was later informed that the skit was intended to be funny, and upon hearing the news, I realized that their depiction of slavery had actually been spot on for the artistic angle they were going for.

And just when you thought that it couldn't get any worse, the assembly drew to a close with Ms. Pam reading a poem about the creation of the black people. In her reading, she made sure to stress the word "God" each and every time it appeared in the poem. She then made all of the students stand up and shout, "When God created me, he made me beautiful!" I found the poem, the proclamation, and the singing of "Lean on Me" that followed to all be incredibly moving. It was a perfect way to waste half of the school day, and since it occurred during the morning half, it was also a perfect way to ensure that no learning would get done for the rest of the day.