Come Celebrate with us in the Library as we recognize the many contributions African Americans have made to our country. A display of books will be up in the Library from February 17-28. We hope you can take a moment to come over and look at the display.

For more information on African American History Month please visit this website:

http://www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov/index.html

 Presidential Proclamation — National African American History Month, 2014

Americans have long celebrated our Nation as a beacon of liberty and
opportunity — home to patriots who threw off an empire, refuge to
multitudes who fled oppression and despair. Yet we must also remember
that while many came to our shores to pursue their own measure of
freedom, hundreds of thousands arrived in chains. Through centuries of
struggle, and through the toil of generations, African Americans have
claimed rights long denied. During National African American History
Month, we honor the men and women at the heart of this journey — from
engineers of the Underground Railroad to educators who answered a free
people’s call for a free mind, from patriots who proved that valor knows
no color to demonstrators who gathered on the battlefields of justice
and marched our Nation toward a brighter day.

As we pay tribute to the heroes, sung and unsung, of African-American
history, we recall the inner strength that sustained millions in
bondage. We remember the courage that led activists to defy lynch mobs
and register their neighbors to vote. And we carry forward the
unyielding hope that guided a movement as it bent the arc of the moral
universe toward justice. Even while we seek to dull the scars of slavery
and legalized discrimination, we hold fast to the values gained through
centuries of trial and suffering.

Every American can draw strength from the story of hard-won progress,
which not only defines the African-American experience, but also lies
at the heart of our Nation as a whole. This story affirms that freedom
is a gift from God, but it must be secured by His people here on earth.
It inspires a new generation of leaders, and it teaches us all that when
we come together in common purpose, we can right the wrongs of history
and make our world anew.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of
America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim February 2014 as
National African American History Month. I call upon public officials,
educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to
observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and
activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day
of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand fourteen, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and
thirty-eighth.