“No need to state the obvious,” my father used to say.

I’ll be rebellious for just a moment though.

February is Black History Month. The United States has its first black president, Barack Obama. We typically and rightfully celebrate the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman during February.

There are famous black figures and some unsung heroes who I would like to honor this month.

An article “Greening the Ghetto” by Elizabeth Kolbert appearing in the New Yorker (Jan. 12) explores the work of Van Jones, founder and president of “Green For All.”

Jones is attempting to find a solution for poverty and global warming at the same time.

In the article Jones is quoted as saying: “I love Barack Obama. I’d pay money just to shine the brother’s shoes. But I’ll tell you this. Do you hear me? One man is not going to save us …”

Jones is building what he calls an “everybody movement,” and it moves across the lines of class and color to achieve solutions for all. He wants to involve young people in the green economy.

This society is often disconnected, focusing on differences rather than commonalities. There is reason to celebrate a leader in this era seeking to bond rather than separate for the sake of common good.

About 15 years ago I was fortunate enough to see Maya Angelou speak. I have been reading her work since I was nine or 10 years old.     

Angelou is a poet, award-winning writer, journalist, activist, performer, director and professor. She is a three-time Grammy Award winner for her autobiographical spoken-word recordings.

As she spoke in her deep, haunting tone, filled with painful truths and hard-earned triumphant joy, she became three-dimensional. All the writing I read so intently for years jumped from the pages and had a voice.

What an honor it was to be in the same room and breath the same air as her.

Similarly, a couple of years ago I had the honor of attending a jazz performance where Wynton Marsalis led a band that literally brought tears to my eyes.

President Obama and Frederick Douglass have a lot in common for two men born in different centuries. Douglass was an abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author and reformer. He also ran on the US Equal Rights Party ticket for vice-president with Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States.

He believed in equality of all people, whether black, female, Indian or immigrant. He often said, “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”

On a lighter note, sometimes hilarious, sometimes political, sometimes profane and always relevant, Chris Rock gives power in a poignant punch with raw and unbridled humor.

George Washington Carver was a scientist, botanist, educator and inventor. He was called by Time magazine in 1941 “Black Leonardo,” referencing Leonardo da Vinci.

He placed emphasis on advocacy of sustainable agriculture, improvement of racial relations, mentoring children, poetry, painting and religion.

Oprah Winfrey survived abuse and molestation. She was a runaway at 13 and was sent to a juvenile detention home where she was denied admission for lack of beds.

Her broadcast career began at 17, when she was hired by WVOL radio in Nashville and two years later signed on with WTVF-TV in Nashville as a reporter and anchor.

She saved a struggling Chicago talk show that in less than a year became “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Winfrey is also a distinguished and serious actress, which stirred the desire to create HARPO Productions Inc.

Fact: HARPO is Oprah spelled backwards.

She was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century by Time magazine, and in 1998 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

What’s more American than baseball? Jackie Robinson was born in Georgia in 1919 and raised by a single mother of five children.

He excelled at all sports. At UCLA, he became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football and track. In 1941, he was named to the All-American football team.

Money problems forced him to leave college. He enlisted in the Army and after objections of racial discrimination. He left the Army with an honorable discharge.

In 1947 Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, pioneering integration in professional sports.

He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York in 1962.

We all speak in our own tongue, bringing beauty and change to the world in an individual manner. I think of the exterior of a person as a soul shell, the container of that particular human being. While I am pleased to honor each of these incredible people for their contributions to the world during this important month, the month of my own birth, I’m glad to belong to one race, the human race.

Mandy Feder is an award-winning writer and editor who is a Lake County News columnist and contributor.

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