Black History Month is history again, shelved until next February. What a shame, for as I wrote a year ago, Black history, and Rhode Island Black history, are worth studying and celebrating every month, not just the shortest month of the year.
That may change in the not-too-distant future. Linda Borg reported in The Providence Journal last Friday that the Rhode Island House is expected to vote this week on a bill encouraging the teaching of Black history and heritage starting in 2022-2023. Rep. Anastasia Williams, D-Providence, is sponsoring the legislation, which has the support of House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi and Finance Committee chairman Marvin Abney.
Walmart has donated $50,000 toward the development of “lesson plans, teacher training and virtual learning tools,” she reported. The curriculum will cover the history of slavery, of course, but also celebrate the achievement of Black Rhode Islanders since the first slave ship dropped anchor here in 1696.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! It’s about time. I have a list of Black athletes who should be included in this curriculum, men and women who demonstrated outstanding physical skill, for sure, but many who also contributed to our culture off the field or court.
I suggest Alton W. Wiley, a trailblazing jurist who died Feb. 17 in Naples, Fla., at the age of 91. He was the first Black person to sit on the District and Superior Courts in Rhode Island. He also was a champion sprinter at the University of Rhode Island and is in the URI Athletics Hall of Fame. He was an Army ROTC student at URI, served as a 2nd Lieutenant in France and retired from the U.S. Army Reserves in 1979 as a Lieutenant Colonel. He earned his law degree at Boston University.
I also suggest Judge Wiley’s little sister, Beverly. The youngest of six Wiley children in Warwick, Bev is still going strong at 75 as Warwick’s director of parks and recreation, a position she assumed in January at the behest of the city’s new mayor, Frank J. Picozzi. She had spent the previous 21 years at the Community College of Rhode Island, 10 as softball coach and 11 as compliance director, and is excited about this new challenge.
“My head is exploding with ideas. I want to get it back to a showcase,” she said of the city’s recreation facilities. “My first summer job was a summer playground supervisor. I used to umpire kids games.”
Bev Wiley’s name is synonymous with softball in Rhode Island. She played into her 30s, coached, umpired and has a been the ASA/USA Softball state commissioner for 28 years. She is also vice president of the Northeast Region. She was inducted into the Rhode Island Softball Slow Pitch Hall of Fame in 2018. Bev can thank her brother for all of that.
“He was my hero,” she told me. “He taught me how to hit a softball. He told me, ’Step into it. Hit it out front.’“
Long after Bev learned to hit a softball, her big brother still introduced her as “my little sister.” She spoke to him shortly before his death. “His last words were, ‘Take care of yourself. I love you.’“
Bev’s influence extends beyond the white lines of a softball field. She is a powerful advocate for gender equity in the state and has served as board chair of the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island.
Siblings Alton and Beverly Wiley are only two reasons we should study Black history and heritage in our state. I could add Ray Johnson, the imposing 6-7 center who led little Class C South Kingstown to state basketball championships in 1965 and 1966; starred in football, basketball and lacrosse at North Yarmouth Academy in Maine during a post-graduate year in 1967, and started for Providence College for the 1969, 1970 and 1971 seasons. He is in the Rhode Island Interscholastic League, North Yarmouth Academy, and New England Basketball Halls of Fame.
And I could add Bobby Thompson, an All-State running back and track champion for Central High School in the mid-1960s who went on to play for the University of Oklahoma, Saskatchewan in the Canadian Football League and Detroit in the NFL. Along the way he earned a master’s degree in education and after football spent 31 years working in several capacities in the Pontiac, Mich., public school system. His teammates held him in such high regard even after 40 years that 57 returned when he was inducted into the Rhode Island Interscholastic League Hall of Fame in 2013.
Black people, not to mention other people of color, have distinguished themselves as athletes and citizens over the decades and have helped to shape who we Rhode Islanders are as a people. But too often, their stories have been lost to time. The General Assembly can change that by moving Rep. Williams’s bill through the legislative pipeline this week.