By Nick Reiher

As I mentioned a while back, I grew up on the northwest side of Chicago in an Italian-Polish neighborhood that was devoid of minorities. Later, Greeks would come, bearing gyros, baklava and diples.

What I knew about Black people came from the news, or my parents, who had their own perceptions.

In grade school, we learned about George Washington Carver the same way we learned about George Washington, history mixed with fable.

There was little or no mention of slavery, except from the excerpts we would see on TV from Black leaders who mentioned wanting all to be “free at last.”

“Free from what?” I thought.

As my world view broadened, slowly, through high school, college and “real life,” I realized there was much more to all stories. And very much more to the history of the Black experience in America.

What I learned along the way told me much history – all kinds of history – had been, you’ll pardon the phrase, whitewashed. Many don’t want to hear this. They call it rewriting history.

Well, yes, it is. With the truth included, some of it not so nice.

There was a time maybe 20 years ago or so when my son asked if we really needed a Black History Month. And, you know, at that time, I wondered, too. Because I thought surely by now, we had heard it all.

Like the Joliet Park District in the 1950s draining the public pools, cleaning them and refilling them after Blacks swam. Like the Herald News using the term “colored” when describing a person who had been arrested.

Surely, that was all behind us.

Obviously, no. And here’s why Black History Month still is very important. At least to me.

As I was doing my morning scroll on Facebook, I came upon a meme that said Black vets were denied GI benefits when they came home from WWII. I looked up several credible sources, and this is what I found:

While it was a federal program, Southerners in Congress managed to have the program administered by individual states, according to History.com. That meant Jim Crow laws in those states, and discrimination in various other cities in the North, ultimately denied benefits to some 1.2 million Black veterans.

The upshot: White veterans in those same areas were able to get GI benefits to pay for college and to buy houses in new suburban neighborhoods that would welcome them. With college degrees, they had access to higher-paying jobs.

Without access to the GI benefits, many, if not all, Black veterans went into the trades, where they also found jobs, often times with every other rung cut from their ladders to success. Without decently paying jobs, Blacks had to find homes where they could, and where they were allowed.

If this weren’t enough, “redlining,” excluding specific neighborhoods from allowing mortgages kept Blacks and other minorities out. This lasted well in to the 1980s and even beyond, despite federal laws and court cases.

There have been Blacks and other minorities who fought against this type of discrimination and won. They achieved despite the obstacles placed before them. They still do.

But how many millions of families – a generation — were held back from what they truly could have accomplished? By their government.

Much of this because a group of White Southern Congressmen did not want to see African-Americans — veterans who had served their country — succeed.

I just learned that today. And it’s only the second day of Black History Month. I sure hope we don’t forget. It would be a shame to repeat history.

Nick Reiher is editor of Farmers Weekly Review.