As February came to an end, the Umoja program held its last event on Black History Month on Feb. 28, 2022, and featured a special guest speaker. Introduced by Dr. Paula L. Parks, Jamaal Brown spoke about the truth surrounding Black History. He mentioned the influential and important people involved, and how much of an impact they created. 

   Brown is the founder of the Black365 team. Their mission according to their website is to “inspire, uplift, and encourage youth around the world” by educating them about the truth regarding Black History. He states that “history truly, truly is black history,” and without educating others about Black History, there is no history since “the world is what it is now because of it.”

   He began by stating, “I was listening to Dr. Martin Luther King’s final speech, we know that speech as ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’, and in that speech, he talked about this conversation that he had with God, where God allowed him to go throughout the ages, and see different places and different lands and different times, and god asked him what age he would like to be born in.”

   He claimed that he would choose the same conclusion Dr. Martin Luther King chose, which is to have been born in the present day, but if he could go through different ages, he would choose to go to several different places.

   The first place Brown mentioned was the Third Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. His reason for traveling there would primarily be so that he could meet the first multi-genius, Imhotep. “He was an architect who designed Egypt’s first step pyramid…he was a poet, an astronomer, and a doctor as well.”

  Along with Brown expressing how much he would have liked to travel through time and meet Imhotep, he continued with his presentation and brought up others like Mansa Musa, which according to Forbes was the richest person ever within world history, Marcus Garvey, who had the largest black organization that wasn’t affiliated with religion ever in recorded history, Lewis Latimer, who contributed into what the invention of the lightbulb is considered to be today and several others within Black History that have impacted the world to this day.