Alyssa Diggs

Audio transcript

To me when I think about being black in America, I get like a sense of pride because you think about all the things that your ancestors have been through, the people before you have been through and you see how they come out of it. And not only do they come out of it, but they thrive and they are successful and they excelled in the things that they did. It makes me want to be a better person, makes me want to be a better nurse, a better student, a better soccer player, because you see the people that came before you and the things that they overcame. And I don’t want anything that they did or the sacrifices that they made to be in vain. So, it just makes me work harder. It motivates me to be the best at everything that I do.

You know about Mohammad Ali or Michael Jordan but who knows about Arthur Ashe – the world champion tennis player? Or Madam C.J. Walker or Ben Carson? You are not going to hear about those unless you go and look it up yourself. I think, Black History Month is important because it gets people thinking about the things that have happened in the past and the accomplishments that have happened that we don’t acknowledge on a daily basis because it’s just not emphasized as much.

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