WKU students kick off Black History Month with opening ceremony

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) -February 1 marks the beginning of Black History Month, and to celebrate, Western Kentucky University Black Student Alliance and the Black History Month Planning Committee held an opening ceremony which included catered food and musical entertainment.

The celebration was the first of many planned for this month at WKU and for one student, who was there, being able to celebrate his history and culture is an important part of what he does.

“Black culture is full of art,” said Bremonte Carpenter, a student at WKU and the founder of Chaos Dance Team, “I think a lot of people don’t forget about how creative and how special we are, when it comes to the art form of dance or music, poetry, of singing, stuff like that. That is very important. It’s very important to our culture. And I love the fact that I had the opportunity to highlight that here. "

WKU NAACP Chapter President Tamera Lott, who was the night’s keynote speaker, read a spoken word piece that she said she had been working on since 2021.

”It’s a celebration of perseverance,” she said, “That specific spoken word means a lot to me because just being in college and then like I said, being a black woman, it means so much to persevere, like perseverance, means so much. So that’s where that came from. And I’m glad that I actually had a whole year to tweak it in to add more stuff”

Lott also announced the reactivation of the NAACP Chapter at the university.

“It’s been in the process of being reactivated since 2018,” Lott said “But we just haven’t had the right people fall into place. And it just we just haven’t had the chance to get it done. But this past year, and in 2021, President Ryan of the adult chapter, was like, Hey, I know you said you wanted to get more involved and whatnot. So why don’t you reactivate the chapter, if you can, like, I think you will be a great fit.”

The event ended with the presentations of awards and a musical performance from the Joy Gospel Choir.

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