Learning from 7-year-old Ayanna Najuma
In honor of Black History Month I want to share an inspiring story of a young Black girl who helped improve our country – a story with a surprising connection to Garfield County today.
Ayanna Najuma was just seven years old in 1958 when she sat down at the “Whites Only” counter of Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City along with her teacher and several schoolmates. She asked the waitress, “May I have a hamburger and a Coke, please?” This simple, reasonable request had radical repercussions.
The waitresses refused to serve these young Black customers, who refused to leave without being served. Dressed in their Sunday best, they sat at the counter for hours, with magazines and coloring books, preventing white customers from ordering lunch themselves.
Infuriated by the audacity of these Black children, some white customers yelled at them, spat on them, and poured ketchup and coffee on them. The children’s parents and the other adult organizers of the sit-in had prepared them for this kind of response; the kids remained calm and resolute.
The next day, the children returned and the attacks by white customers continued. On day three of the sit-in, the children were served their hamburgers and Cokes, and Katz Drug Store eliminated their Whites Only policy at all of their stores across five states.
When I first saw the photos of Najuma as a skinny little girl in her pretty white dress being glared at by enraged adults, my gut reaction was alarm that her mother allowed her to be in that situation. When my own two daughters were young, I did everything I could to protect them from being exposed to human cruelty, let alone being the target of it.
My gut response of protectiveness was the reaction of a white mom who had the option of shielding her young children from meanness and abuse. Najuma’s mom had no such choice. The degradation of segregation was inescapable for Black families in the south in the 1950s, as was the constant terror of never knowing when a family member might be arbitrarily thrown in prison or even murdered by a lynch mob.
In a recent interview Najuma was asked if she even understood what the sit-in was about when she was just seven. “Oh, absolutely,” she responded. “Despite the fact that we were asking for a hamburger and a Coke,” Najuma said, she was well aware that “really, we were asking for respect and dignity.”
Najuma said she was raised to believe, “I was just as good as anybody else and I wasn’t better than anybody else.” That’s what she kept in mind during the sit-in.
In 2017, Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher of children’s books, printed a story about Najuma titled, Can Kids Change the World? They also invited kids to send letters to Najuma, and she has now heard from over 25,000 children.
Here’s where the Garfield County connection comes in: For several months, a local group has been berating county library trustees for not agreeing to restrict access to certain books this group finds offensive. The person spearheading this effort also urged Garfield Re2 school board members at their 12/13/23 meeting to stop promoting Scholastic and to ban Scholastic book fairs from the schools.
This person’s statements echo that of the far-right national group Moms for Liberty, which claims that Scholastic is “indoctrinating youth with radical viewpoints” by publishing books that address racism or include gay or transgender characters. Meanwhile, Moms for Liberty recommends W. Cleon Skousen’s The Making of America to teach history, a book which describes American slave owners as the “worst victims” of the slavery system.
Fortunately, Scholastic agrees with the great majority of Americans that countering racism requires that we acknowledge its existence in our past as well as present-day society. Scholastic also stands with the majority of us who understand that including gay and transgender characters in books helps children learn that all human beings deserve the same respect. If we want all kids to believe, as Ayanna Najuma did, that they are as worthy as any other person, they need to see themselves reflected in the books they read.
Scholastic President Ellie Berger recently told their authors and illustrators, “We are committed to providing access and choice, and to helping young readers develop critical skills needed to exercise democracy and build a society free of prejudice and hate.”
Najuma believed that she could make changes to an unjust system. Those who oppose teaching stories like Najuma’s would prefer that we forget the power each of us has to help create a more egalitarian, just, and caring society.
Black History month is a time to celebrate everyday heroes like Najuma who remind us we all have the power and responsibility to keep pushing our nation closer to its revolutionary ideals of equality and freedom for all.
Debbie Bruell of Carbondale chairs the Garfield County Democrats and is a past member of the Roaring Fork Schools Board of Education.
