Black History Celebration set for Feb. 27

The Black History 2016 Celebration will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 27 at the Old Mt. Calvary Outreach Center in Concord. The event will include music from the Pike County Community Mass Choir, a praise dance from Georgia Tabernacle Praise, a performance on black inventors by students in the REACH program and input from attendees. The program is free and everyone is invited to attend. To be a part of the program, contact Patricia Beckham at 770-468-4937, Regina Bridges at 678-588-4058 or Edward Alexander at 770-567-8991. The program is sponsored by NAACP Unit 5228 and Concerned Citizens of Pike County.’We have struggled – we had a movement here in Pike County back in the 60s. We had some doors opened, but there is still room for more positive progress to be made,’ said organizer Patricia Beckham. Students who are part of the REACH after school program at Old Mt. Calvary Outreach will portray the history of black inventors from A to Z during the Black History 2016 Celebration. Black history month originated with the organization on Negro History Week in 1926, by Carter Goodwin Woodson. The month of February was selected in deference to Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, both born in that month. Woodson founded The Association For The Study Of Negro Life and History in 1915 to train black historians and to collect, preserve and publish documents on blacks. Born as the son of slaves, he began high school at the age of 20 and studied at Berea College, The University of Chicago, The Sorbonne and Harvard University, where he earned his PhD in 1912.’We had our first organized group that aimed to improve conditions in Pike, they were The Concerned Citizens of Pike County, which is still in operation today, S.C.L.C., United Men of Pike and the Pike County Branch NAACP,’ said Beckham.