As we approach the month of February, which was officially designated as Black History Month in 1976, many of the leaders and educators in the country are making plans for how to more appropriately honor the occasion. There will be school programs and community gatherings, all centered, at least in part, around the delicate task of examining a time that is ebbing further and further into history as our society progresses.

To say that the struggle African Americans face in this country is over would be a somewhat ridiculous assertion, though few would argue the fact that progress has been made.

As we as a society move forward, however, there are going to be more and more children who hear their parents’ and, increasingly, their grandparents’ stories about the struggles of the previous century, and say, “No. It couldn’t have been like that.”

One of the most wonderful and eye-opening experiences I have had here at the newspaper was while working on an article about a baseball program at Pocahontas High School, the former African American high school in Powhatan.

Three of the former players were generous enough to share their stories with me, talking frankly and honestly about what it was like for an African American to grow up in a small, southern American town in the 1950s, going to school, working and playing baseball.

It was a glimpse, however small, of a world that existed before my time, vestiges of which I can see all around this county.

I am relatively young and I am white, and neither of these facts do much for my credibility as a person knowledgeable about African American history. But I would like to ask, if I may, that we not let this Black History Month only be about the stories that we hear every year, the ones we have elevated to the point at which they don’t even seem real.

Race has become an issue to be tiptoed around in this country, so eager are some to paint simple misunderstandings with the brush of malevolent intent. Often we don’t know how to ask the questions and are so worried that we will seem ignorant, or perhaps offensive, that we swallow our desire to understand. I just don’t think it should be that way.

I would encourage people, not just this month but whenever possible, to go out and talk to regular people who lived through the early days of the Civil Rights movement in this country. I assure you, they are all around us. Take along a recorder if possible and preserve their stories for others to hear.

Someday my own grandchildren will not be able to fathom that opportunities in this country were ever less than equal for everyone. But in teaching them our history, and how far we have come, I’d also like to be able to tell them of the ordinary citizens that made it possible.