Liberty Tech celebrates Black History Month
JACKSON, Tenn. — A local high school came together to celebrate Black History Month.
“So much of what has happened in the past is who we are right now. We stand on the shoulders of people who made great commitments and great sacrifice, and we need for our students to know you didn’t just arrive here at the situation you’re in and the conditions you’re in alone,” said Principal King David Rush.
Liberty Technology Magnet High School students and professionals from the community came together Wednesday morning to celebrate the month.
Rush says the intent of the program was to make sure students know there are many people who had to make sacrifices in the past.
“Never having experience [of] not being able to drink out of whatever water fountain that you want to, and I’ve experienced that. The experience of never being able to go into the front door of a building, you had to go into the back door. Some of those things are things that we bring awareness to that we’ve had to endure, but because we’ve endured, we’ve become stronger, we’ve become greater and we’ve become better,” Rush said.
“We pretty much just celebrated our culture like we should, and we need to because there’s so much going on in the world today where these times are needed. Like we need people to step up and celebrate the Black culture,” said Tre Jones, a sophomore at the school.
The program had student speakers, dancers, essay writers, and slam poetry artists.
Tears were shed when the choir made a tribute for students and their choir director who died within the last year.
“Today, we lost somebody and I was singing for the people who were mourning,” said Aleesya George, a sophomore.
“As I sang today and looked into the crowd, I saw people tearing up and I was actually touched because I was at least able to help with the mourning in some type of way,” Jones said.
Liberty Technology Magnet High School will continue their celebration of Black History Month with a door decorating contest over the next few days.
