GMAAN also hosted its third annual Black History month celebration entitled, “Upholding the Legacy: Past, Present, and Future.” My wife and I attended the event at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. We really enjoyed ourselves. I saw people whom I had not seen in years, and my wife actually ran into people that she knew from her college days at Michigan State University. Both the band that played prior to the start of the program and the musical entertainment during the program were excellent.

The highlight of the evening was the speaker, Cathy Hughes of Radio One. Her achievements as owner of a $2 billion network of radio stations across the nation are remarkable in their own right, but in her address, she told the story of her family’s origins in Iowa and the subsequent migration of her grandfather (Dr. Laurence C. Jones) to Mississippi, where he established the Piney Woods School nearly 100 years ago. After struggling for years in relative anonymity, Dr. Jones appeared on This Is Your Life in the 1950s. After his appearance, the outpouring of financial support from all walks of American life enabled Piney Woods to establish an endowment for perpetual financial support.

One of the things that Ms. Hughes shared that I didn’t know was that at one time in America, there were nearly 100 thriving Black boarding schools. Now there are only handfuls, with one of them being Piney Woods. Growing up in the south, I had heard of Piney Woods, but after hearing the story, it really prompted me to learn more about such a significant producer of African American college-educated people.

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