Jaqueline McAlmont’s Black History T-shirts send out one message: “Black History Is American History.”
Designed using Pan-African colors, McAlmont sells her T-shirts as an effort to do her part around Lisha Kill Middle School in Albany, New York, where she has been a support staff member for about five years. She told News 10 ABC about the statement on her graphic tees, a topic she noticed no one highlighted around the public school in Colonie. “Black History is American History,” said McAlmont. “Nobody understands…it’s intertwined, it’s there.” Literature published in 2021 in the National Institutes of Health from the University of Chicago’s Monica Peek, MD, supports Almont’s message that Black History is an integral part of America’s history. “It is the story of triumph over adversity, determination in the face of uncertainty, and courage and conviction standing down hate and violence,” Peek wrote.
For McAlmont, her T-shirt sales are not about personal profit. Instead, all proceeds are collected to support school children in Hopetown, a village in Berbice, Guyana, where her grandmother was born; and the project has introduced a creative learning experience for both students and teachers at Lisha Kill.
McAlmont said students in the village “have a desire to learn” and she has directly witnessed their hard work even without basic supplies like backpacks, lunches, or uniforms. Lisha Kill 7th grader Vreej Patel, said the mission of McAlmont’s project resonates with her. “This means a lot to me because I was from India, and there aren’t that many good schools that you can go to, and this is going to help kids in Guyana to go to good schools, so this is going to be very nice for them,” said Patel.
The middle school staffer noted that the late New York native Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to run for Congress, was of Caribbean descent. According to the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the civil rights activist was the daughter of immigrants from Barbados and Guyana.
Lisha Kill will be decorated for Black History Month, starting Jan. 31. Supporters of McAlmont’s mission and efforts to help students in Guyana can visit her Facebook page to inquire about purchasing the “Black History Is American History” t-shirts, which according to a post are priced at $20.
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