bit emotional so i literally wrote notes to try to stay on topic. so i would like to start this with a personal experience. when i first started in politics, i the way democrats use black history. they center it around what white people did to us. so, in order to counteract that, i decided to do black history month without white people. and that way i could just look at our principles, our character, what we believed in. and especially focusing on my state, the safety virginia to actually learn some of the history there. during that experience, i learned about like the emancipation hampton university. this is where some of the first slaves who escaped during the civil war came and were taught to read. and then that school became one of the first hvcus that would go on to educate people like booker t. washington on his way to tuskegee.