SFX fifth graders present quotes, scriptures to commemorate Black History Month following school Mass
Following Wednesday’s school Mass, Saint Francis Xavier (SFX) Catholic School’s fifth-grade class read quotes and scriptures to commemorate Black History Month.
Black History Month takes place every February in honor of the Civil Rights Movement through which African Americans fought for equal rights in the United States.
The Civil Rights Movement took place in the mid-20th Century and fought against legalized racial segregation and discrimination, like those in the American South designed to discriminate against African Americans.
Much of the Civil Rights struggle took place here in Birmingham. Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. led campaigns and boycotts in Birmingham and Montgomery. These helped draw media attention to racial segregation in the South.
King himself was arrested in Birmingham for disobeying an injunction against "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing." During King’s subsequent imprisonment in the Birmingham Jail, he wrote his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” citing natural law theorists like St. Thomas Aquinas to argue that individuals have a moral responsibility to civilly disobey unjust laws.
Ms. Ann Bettis’s fifth graders read several excerpts from the letter, as well as quotes from the Apostle Paul, John F. Kennedy, the Gospel of Luke, Mother Theresa, The Book of Acts, Pope John Paul II, and other sources.
“The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed,” one of the students read from King’s letter. “In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free,” another student read from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. “But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Saint Francis Xavier Catholic School is an accredited classical Catholic PreK-8 school in Birmingham’s Crestline neighborhood that uses the time-tested Catholic Intellectual Tradition to form students in virtue through the pursuit of academic excellence and service toward God and neighbor.
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