AFRO reprints guide ‘That is Our Conflict’
By Aria Brent, AFRO Employees Author, abrent@afro.com
On Nov. 7, members of the group got here out to the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore to honor generations of Black veterans and acknowledge three veterans who really embody what it means to reply the decision to service. Maj.Gen. Janeen Birckhead, Col. (Ret.) Edna W. Cummings, Maj. (Ret.) Edgar Brookins (posthumously) and Maryland Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Woods have been all acknowledged on the AFRO’s Veterans Day occasion “That is Our Conflict: A Salute to Our Veterans.” The Morgan State College ROTC Program additionally acquired particular recognition.
Birckhead at the moment serves as The Adjutant Basic of Maryland and Cummings is a Six Triple-Eight Congressional Gold Medal champion, who performed an instrumental position within the girls receiving nationwide recognition. The retired colonel has contributed to the reprinting of a 1945 AFRO unique guide, “That is Our Conflict.”
The guide is a compilation of choose tales from AFRO battle correspondents who traveled to Europe in efforts to seize on the bottom protection of World Conflict II. Cummings shared why it’s so necessary that we proceed to inform the tales of Black veterans.
“Our Black veterans tales are necessary as a result of it connects us to a heritage of service. There’s a primary historical past of veterans’ contributions to wars however the heritage makes it private,” defined Cummings. “If our Black veterans don’t inform these tales, that heritage is misplaced and our communities can’t connect with it. We would like our communities to attach not solely to the historical past however to the Black heritage of veteran service.”
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Maryland’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Anthony Woods served because the keynote speaker for the occasion and he expressed comparable sentiments to Cummings, noting that telling the tales of our Black veterans and books like ‘That is Our Conflict’ are needed with a purpose to really honor them.
“One of many issues I’ve seen in my work on the Maryland division of Veterans Affairs is that individuals of coloration and girls usually below make the most of the advantages they’ve earned from serving within the navy and lots of occasions they don’t even determine themselves as veterans,” shared Woods. “I believe that’s as a result of there hasn’t been a full vary of tales about veterans instructed. The work carried out on the AFRO helps inform a broad vary of tales of those that’ve served prior to now.”
