By Norma Adams-Wade
Sr. Staff Writer
This is the first Black History Month since the disastrous year of 2020. We want to close that door and move toward hopeful opportunities ahead. Right? But is forgetting the past more productive than remembering it? That’s the question a Dallas pundit of African-American history is asking as we enter this exhaustive 28-day historical marathon. Clarence E. Glover Jr. is one of many scholars who will be cramming more than four centuries of Black history into this short span of time. The former diversity educator for Southern Methodist University and Dallas ISD is a minister, urban gardener and drummer who often presents an African interpretation of Biblical scriptures and sometimes lectures as his ancestral alter-ego character “Professor Freedom.” Glover said he will be probing for answers to his what-have-we-learned question as he begins his busy schedule of lectures, libation ceremonies and community outreach projects. He also will spend much time leading Sankofa ceremonies that honor forgotten and unknown laborers and change-makers from the widespread African diaspora.
His consulting agency, Sankofa Education Services, highlights the West African Sankofa symbol—showing a mythical bird moving forward but looking back—to promote the value of learning from the past. “Where there are no roots, there are no fruit,” Glover said. “We as African-Americans must recognize our historical and cultural roots in order to produce quality and cultural fruit.” He said he will build on the 2021 national Black History Month theme—“Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity”—and will title his own lecture “E Pluribus Unum: African Families and the American Dream.” The graduate of Grambling State University and SMU’s Perkins School of Theology said both topics give him space to explore current developments, including the new Biden-Harris administration’s emphasis on restoring national unity. But some folks may reject his surprising point that “unity is nothing new for America.”
The nation’s founding motto of unity—E pluribus unum, or Latin for “out of many, one”—seems to have gotten lost in recent racial and political turmoil on American soil, Glover said. A large portion of the “many” includes ignored enslaved Africans and their descendants who provided all-day, back-breaking labor, Glover said. The laborers planted and harvested crops including cotton, tobacco, wheat, lumber, rice, corn and indigo—goods that formed the economy upon which the colonies and new independent nation were built. “We must accept the fact that the dream of the American nation, 1776, was built on the backs of enslaved African families,” said Glover, who was born on Shreveport farmland his family has owned for centuries. So, he will honor the millions of forgotten enslaved Africans and their descendants, buried in and outside cemeteries, where many bear no headstones to even recognize them as “unknown.”
Glover said he likes to think that a brief annual Dallas commemoration he hosts also will help bolster the African-American Burial Grounds Study Act. The measure is a bill introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, that the Senate passed unanimously in December. The bill, which awaits a House vote, would establish a national network to document, preserve and maintain African-American burial grounds across the nation. As he does yearly, Glover invites people of all cultures to join him as he lays a commemorative wreath and hosts a brief memorial at 3 pm Feb. 28, the last Sunday in Black History Month, at Freedman’s Memorial Cemetery in Dallas, 2525 N. Central Expressway at Lemmon Avenue. To participate or learn more, email: clarencegloverjr@aol.com or call 214-546-3480.
