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In honor of Black History Month just starting I am going to tell you in the greatest detail all that my high school Alabama History book, "Know Alabama," said about the contributions of African-Americans in my home state.

Here goes: There was a single half page picture of a white man on a horse leaning down and patting a Black field hand on the head. It looked like the slave was being petted. The caption read, "Masters Treated Their Slaves Kindly."

I am not making that up.

If that caption were an answer in a Jeopardy topic labeled "Alabama History," no one would guess, "What is the only contribution of African-Americans in the most used high school state history text in Alabama in the early 1970s?"

Now for what my state history text left out:

It left out my white grandmother who decimated her chicken coop for frying every time Dr. King came to Birmingham in the early 1960s. Thirty-years later I met a woman who worked with Dr. King then who remember "that crazy old white lady who always brought fried chicken to the frontlines and who never allowed herself to be photographed." I was thrilled to hear her contribution remembered.

It left out the African-American women at Alabama State who started the Montgomery bus boycott that Dr. King joined later. Throughout the boycott, these female teachers risked their family's livelihood by copying boycott material at night on state college mimeograph machines at state expense.

It left out Rosa Parks and the two unmarried, pregnant teens before her who would not move to the back of the bus. Rosa Parks became the test case because local leaders thought she would "play" better in the publicity.

Some other African-American women left out of my American History text were:

• Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) who was an abolitionist, suffragist and orator. Her most lasting speech remains "Ain't I a Woman?"
• Madame C.J. Walker (1867-1919) who was an inventor, a business woman and a philanthropic community leader. Long before Oprah Winfrey, she was the first African-American female millionaire in America.
• Bessie Coleman (1892-1926) who was the first African-American female airplane pilot.
• Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) whose sweet gospel voice remains unrivaled.
• Patricia Roberts Harris (1924-1985) who was a lawyer and teacher. She was the first African-American female law school dean in America. She was President Johnson's ambassador to Luxembourg and President Carter's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. She was the first African-American to hold both of those positions.

Brave male African-Americans of the 1700s also left out of that American History class text were:

• Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) who was a mathematician and an astronomer. He worked on the land survey that helped to establish Washington, D.C.
• Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable (1745-1818) who was a pioneer and a business man. He was the founder of the city of Chicago.
• Jim Beckwourth (1798-1866) who was a scout, an explorer and a mountain man. He had the rare honor of being adopted by the Crow tribe.

A few of us may have been lucky enough to have been taught about the abolitionist and orator, Frederick Douglas (1817-1895) and Scott Joplin (1868-1917), the musician known as the "King of Ragtime."

But the 1800s also gave us:

• Henry O. Tanner (1859-1937) who was an artist self-exiled to Paris where he eventually received the French Legion of Honor for his work. He left the United States early in his career when white students threw him out of a second story window to keep from being taught by an African-American man.
• Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906) a poet and novelist.
• Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975) a chemist. He invented several medications and founded more than one company.

The 1900s that gave us the well-known Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) also gave us Thelonious Monk (1917-1982), the jazz musician and composer.

But it was on the sports field that many of the century's greatest challenges to racism got played out. Jessie Owens (1913-1980) was a track and field star who won Olympic Gold at the 1936 games in Germany, inspite of Hitler's hatred of Blacks and other minorities. In that mindset, Jesse was not supposed to even be able to do what he did with courage and grace.

My husband was, and remains to this day, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He still mourns the team's move to the West coast. He tells people that the Fall of 1955 was a very important time to him. First, the Dodgers won the World Series . And, "oh yeah," his wife was also born then.

In this context, Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) broke the color bar in major league baseball by playing for my husband's beloved still-in-Brooklyn Dodgers.

One play my spouse still talks about had Robinson playing second base. Willie Mays was in centerfield for the Giants. Robinson hit a triple deep into Mays' space. When Robinson got to third he doffed his hat to Mays and Mays laughed in return.

Jackie was a ball player's ball player, a civil rights activist and a businessman.

His recently released vintage Wheaties cereal box picture is in a frame in our kitchen partly because he should have had such an honor long ago as a player.

But mostly, his cereal box picture is on our wall because he lived and shared this belief,

"...I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect...I never believed in backing out just because things weren't the best they could be.."

A user-contributed article by Rev. Rus Cooper-Dowda