Recognitions and Holidays

​​May is the 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, National Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, and Mental Health Awareness Month. (Scroll down to read about each.)

Brown v. Board of Education

Linda Brown, a third grader, was required by law to attend a school for black children in her hometown of Topeka, Kansas. To do so, Linda walked six blocks, crossing dangerous railroad tracks, and then boarded a bus that took her to Monroe Elementary. Yet only seven blocks from her house was Sumner Elementary, a school attended by white children, and which, save for segregation, Linda would otherwise have attended.

The Topeka, Kansas chapter of the NAACP recruited Linda’s father, Oliver Brown, along with a dozen other local black parents, to file suit against the Topeka Board of Education in 1951. By the time the case made it to the US Supreme Court in 1954, it had been combined with four other similar school segregation cases into a single unified case.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is the case in which, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9–0) that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions. The decision declared that separate educational facilities for white and African American students were inherently unequal. It thus rejected as inapplicable to public education the “separate but equal” doctrine, advanced by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), according to which laws mandating separate public facilities for whites and African Americans do not violate the equal protection clause if the facilities are approximately equal. Although the 1954 decision strictly applied only to public schools, it implied that segregation was not permissible in other public facilities. Considered one of the most important rulings in the Court’s history, Brown v. Board of Education helped inspire the American civil rights movement of the late 1950s and ’60s.  The case—and the efforts to undermine the decision—brought greater awareness to racial inequalities and the struggles African Americans faced. The success of Brown galvanized civil rights activists and increased efforts to end institutionalized racism throughout American society.

Brown v. Board of Education was argued on December 9, 1952. The attorney for the plaintiffs was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court (1967–91). The case was reargued on December 8, 1953, to address the question of whether the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment would have understood it to be inconsistent with racial segregation in public education. The 1954 decision found that the historical evidence bearing on the issue was inconclusive.

​National Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

National Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month began as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week, first observed in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, who noted the “enormous contributions to the sciences, arts, industry, government and commerce” made by Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush expanded the celebration to cover the whole month of May. The month of May was chosen to honor the first Japanese immigrant in 1843 and the completion of the transcontinental railroad by Chinese laborers in 1869. 

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is a celebration of diverse and rich cultures, histories and contributions of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. The term Asian/Pacific encompasses all the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have contributed significantly to many facets of American culture and society, including science and medicine, literature and art, sports and recreation, government and politics, and activism and law. In 2021, Kamala Harris became the first Asian American Vice President of the United States. 

This is an opportunity for us to educate ourselves and learn more about the Asian American and Pacific Islander people, culture, and accomplishments.

Jewish American Heritage Month

On April 20, 2006, President George W. Bush proclaimed that May would be Jewish American Heritage Month. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania urging the president to proclaim a month that would recognize the more than 350-year history of Jewish contributions to American culture. The resolutions passed unanimously, first in the House of Representatives in December 2005 and later in the Senate in February 2006.

​Jewish American Heritage Month celebrates the achievements of Jewish Americans, fosters pride among the American Jewish community, and aims to educate and enlighten a wider audience about the achievements of Jewish Americans.  This month is an opportunity for congregations to explore their history and look further into the larger Jewish immigration story.  It is also a chance to share your knowledge and Jewish pride with your community and highlight Jewish Americans and southern Jewish Americans. 

Mental Health Awareness Month

This Mental Health Month, challenge yourself to examine your world and how it can affect your overall health. Look around, look within – from your neighborhood to genetics, many factors come into play when it comes to your mental health.

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