Leonard Pitts writes for the Miami Herald, an opinion column to be more precise, which is syndicated nationwide and reproduced in our local paper. A recent column of his talks about how blacks played a significant role in American History, but that it isn't covered as it should be. Because of this, people are ignorant of vital statistics that helped to shape the nation we live in today. He mentions one reader's disbelief that close to 5,000 blacks were lynched back when that was the thing to do.

He also complained about a PA politician that doesn't think black history should be a required course in high school, saying that the three 'R's are more important.

Right off the bat one can see this guy is clueless, the PA guy I mean. High school kids are so underworked that one more course isn't going to kill them. That aside, it isn't only black history that should be addressed, but a history of the people in general. History is full of the major events that have shaped our world into what it is today. I'm always using ancient Rome as an example, but that empire is just an example of a recurring theme. Everyone knows how great the Roman Empire came to be, a huge territory administered for the most part from a relatively tiny city on the western shores of the Italian peninsula. Rome was a great city, but nobody ever mentions the thousands of people that toiled just to feed the masses there! There are countless other groups from the Roman Empire and throughout all of history that have been hidden by the people that write the histories.

It is tragic the way people have been oppressed, but it isn't limited to the Indian, Jew and black American. They will join the countless others in history as time presses their plight deeper into obscurity as the 'truly great' people in ages to come overshadow the misfortunes they have endured. The victor writes the history. It has been true for the few thousand years since histories were first recorded, and it only promises to continue unabated.