Black History Month

Tallinn English College
February 4, 2003

Principal Kruusimägi, students and teachers of the Tallinn English College, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you very much for inviting me here today.

We are neighbors and we are partners. I have seen your building here just down the street from our Embassy many times. I am glad I have finally gotten a chance to visit.

But, it is also good to know that you have had much more useful interchanges with the U.S. Embassy. You have had, I understand, at least two American high school teachers here as part of the Fulbright program. I am sure we will have other cooperation in the future.

I have come here today to talk about Black History month.

In one form or another since the year 1926, Americans have celebrated the role in our history played by African-Americans. The purpose is to make sure that the contributions of African-Americans to the success of the United States are not neglected. For many years it was. I will point out to you that African Americans were part of American history for three hundred years before 1926. As we proceed in my remarks, we will return to this fact and what it means for my country.

You may be asking yourselves what the role of African Americans has to do with you, or with me on this cold day in February here in Estonia.

The short answer is that you cannot know America or Americans if you do not know about the role of African Americans in our history and our society. It is a cliché in these presentations to talk about African Americans' successes in the arts, in every aspect of our historical development, and in careers of all kinds. This, of course is true. African Americans have participated in every single event in American history from the first battle in the American Revolution to Saturday's tragic Space Shuttle Columbia crash.

Let me start from a different point, however, a point which you may well understand, but one which I doubt many of your parents or their parents could because of Estonia's closed history.

African Americans have fundamentally influenced almost everything you see about Americans, perhaps in ways many Americans do not even know. African Americans fundamentally influence how we talk, how we walk, how we play, the rhythms of our lives and how we see the world. American literature and American speech is replete with additions from this source. The writers you will examine here today have influenced popular thought and culture in all corners of our country as many, many other African Americans have done and are doing today.

Let me give you another odd example.

I take dancing lessons here. My Estonian language teacher was perplexed. He said he always finds it strange to teach Americans to dance. They respond to entirely different rhythms. African and African-Caribbean rhythms are fundamental to American rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and much of American music. Did you know where the beat in the blues comes from? It is the same rhythm that was used by cotton field workers to chop cotton in the Mississippi Delta.

But, it is not only because of the positive influence of African Americans that I say you cannot know America without knowing about the history of African Americans. The history of African Americans is also the history of the single greatest problem my country has faced.

We pride ourselves on being a nation of freedom and a nation of immigrants. We are the place where peoples from all over the world came eagerly to seek opportunity and freedom. African Americans came to the U.S. in chains. In a free country, they were not free in the most fundamental sense of that word. I give July 4 speeches every year. These speeches extol my country's freedoms and its success.

Well, listen to what Frederick Douglas -- an escaped slave who went on to be an orator, writer and diplomat -- said about July 4.

"What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham, your boasted liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, a swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-footed impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality , hollow mockery . . ."

The same point was made only a few years later by Abraham Lincoln, who eventually would be responsible for ending slavery in the United States.

He said in 1854, "I cannot but hate it [the spread of slavery]. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world -- enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites -- causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because if forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty . . ."

The treatment by the white majority of the black minority of the United States has consistently been the single most painful and bloody chapter in American history. We are very many miles ahead from the time of Douglas and Lincoln -- both of whom incidentally were born in February. But, even today the issue of race is our most difficult topic. Just a month ago, the most powerful man in the United States Senate lost his leadership position because of comments that many interpreted as advocating the resegregation of the races in the South.

So, ladies and gentlemen, you cannot know Americans without knowing the positive contributions African Americans have made to our nation and you cannot know America unless you understand this difficult struggle.

Today, you will examine the work several African American writers - Gwendolyn Brooks, James Alan McPherson, Terry McMillan, Ntozake Shange, Charles Johnson, Houston A. Baker, Jr., Samuel R. Delany, Gloria Naylor, John Edgar Wideman, Jamaica Kincaid, Dori Sanders, Rita Dove, Walter Mosley, and Maya Angelou.

In fact, although their experiences are those of African Americans, and this flavors their work, these are simply great American writers who chronicle the American story. The writers here have many voices, many styles and many genres. Their works include novels, plays, poetry, mysteries, and science fiction. They are here before you not because of their race but because of their vision, their voice and their undeniable talent.

I am proud, therefore, to present to you some of the best of American literature and to celebrate the history of a great part the American people.

Thank you.