Black History Month celebrated with soul food, Step Show

SDSU honors Black history with month full of events

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February is recognized as Black History Month and South Dakota State University is hosting multiple events in the coming weeks to celebrate and remember Black history.

According to Adonai Ghebrekidan, Black Student Alliance (BSA) president, Black History Month is a time to educate students on the past and celebrate the cultural impact the Black community has had on modern times.

“Black History Month is great because it’s a history that isn’t really as educated or isn’t as clear as people think,” Ghebrekidan said. “A lot of the things that we have learned in high school are just mere facts to the whole story… It’s a great time for everybody to educate themselves about the actual Black history.”

The first of these events is a collaboration with the Brookings Public Library to support Martin Luther King Week. Students from local schools will partake in a drawing contest and the submissions will be posted in the Volstorff Ballroom for the duration of the month.

The next event will be recognizing Cleveland Abbott, a 1916 Black SDSU graduate who went on to serve in World War I, coach Olympic athletes and hold multiple sports titles. According to Multicultural Student Success Adviser Jay Molock, Abbott won at least seven national championships, coached track teams and paved the way for women to get involved in sports. Doug Wermedal, associate vice president of student affairs, will be speaking at the event.

The next event will be a Red Cross Blood Drive hosted by the Multicultural Center and sponsored by the pharmacy school, BSA and athletic department. The blood drive will be Feb. 15-16.

Soul food will be served at the next event Feb. 23 in the Multicultural Center. The authentic southern soul food will be catered from Sioux City and is meant to educate people on the origins of the food. “Soul food” originated from southern states like Mississippi, Georgia and Florida. Molock said this cultural food was the result of slaves making innovating dishes out of slave masters’ leftover foods.

“Slave owners didn’t cook, they had slaves to do the cooking,” Molock said. ‘What the slaves in the house couldn’t cook is what the white people didn’t want, so they will take the entrails out of