February 01, 2021

Celebrating Black History Month 2021

The Foundation for Delaware County celebrates Black History Month by recognizing that for centuries the economic strength of this country relied largely on the enslavement of Black Americans. We believe it is critically important to understand the Black experience in a culture of deeply engrained assumptions about white superiority, and how that history and those assumptions have impacted issues of racial equity today.

We also celebrate the many significant, often overlooked, accomplishments of so many Black Americans from the many artists and writers like Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison to inventors and scientists like George Washington Carver and Joseph Lee who invented the bread maker in 1902; community and political leaders like Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1969, and Bessie Coleman, who became the first licensed Black pilot in 1919.

And while we celebrate Black history, we are working and advocating to ensure a more equitable future for members of the Black community in Delaware County. For more than 25 years, the maternal and child health programs at the foundation have promoted and worked towards health equity every day, serving more than 10,000 clients each year.

From the beginning The Foundation for Delaware County has committed to engage fearlessly in open discussions about issues of social and racial inequities that prevent Delaware County from building a brighter future for all. In 2020 we initiated a Racial Equity Task Force that envisions a community in which justice and equity is experienced by every individual and within every organization.

The Task Force has three major goals:

Identify and offer opportunities for individuals to grow their own understanding of what it will take to achieve equity and the role they can choose to play personally.
Review, assess, and create organizational policies and practices to achieve equity within the programs and operations of the Foundation.
Convene individuals and entities throughout Delaware County and engage the community in conversations about what it will take to achieve and sustain equity and justice.

The Foundation for Delaware County does not claim to have all the answers. But we know that, in the words of James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” While we are making this statement in honor of Black History Month, we commit to facing the truth of racial inequity to create lasting change, touch individual hearts, and deepen our impact in Delaware County.