Mon Valley NAACP offers youth-inspired Black History Month program

By KRISTIE LINDEN

klinden@yourmvi.com

The Mon Valley NAACP had to go virtual for its annual Black History Month program this year, but it didn’t stop them from bringing the community together — especially the youth.

Much like this year’s celebration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, the Mon Valley NAACP invited area youth to prepare something to read as part of the program.

This time, seven kids wrote brief essays about Black heroes who inspire them. The kids could choose whomever they wanted and then each one read their piece to the audience on Zoom.

The essays were called, “Because of them, we can become.”

Madison Aldrich, a fifth-grader from Penn Hills who plays violin and flute and gets straight As, started things off by offering a presentation on Dr. Frederick D. Patterson, a veterinarian.

Madison chose him because she also wants to be a veterinarian. 

Patterson was an American educator who created the United Negro College Fund.

Madison said Patterson’s famous quote was, “If you permit yourself to be treated differently, you are condemned to an unequal relationship.”

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