Dear St. Francis College Community,

As we move into the month of February, designated Black History Month and officially recognized by President Ford in 1976, I ask you to take the opportunity to learn and reflect. These moments and commemorations are opportunities for us to reflect on the significant sacrifices and contributions of African-Americans. There will be announcements regarding some programming but please consider taking this opportunity to spend time daily over this month reflecting and learning.

With that in mind, I share with you a brief passage from a book that I go to periodically to be provoked as I aspire, however imperfectly, to be a champion, like Jesus and our patron Saints Francis and Clare, for raising the voice of the underserved and those who have been marginalized. This passage comes from the pen of a great American, a historian, a sociologist, a political activist, and a novelist--W.E. B. DuBois:

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.