Other history months we need; Consider Italians. Most of them arrived after slavery. They are associated with pizza and the Mafia but they were far more than that.

  Don Surber (substack.com)

. . ."Heisenberg said, “I owe my patriotic duty to my country. I’m not going to defect to the United States.” That really shook Fermi up and he decided to move ahead, because if the Germans beat the Americans to this, it would be an absolute disaster."

David N. Schwartz wrote in 2017, The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and
Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age.  Fermi built the first nuclear reactor
 as part of that Manhattan Project in Chicago.

"February marks Black History Month in which the contributions of black people are honored.

"The best example is Norbert Rillieux, a freeman born in New Orleans in 1806. In 1830, he went to study engineering in Paris. There he invented a process for refining sugar. Not only did he give us white sugar but he transformed the chemical industry.

"Nick Weldon wrote in 2021, “Rillieux’s invention, the multiple-effect evaporator, streamlined what had been a slow and costly process for purifying cane juice by using a series of vacuum chambers that used heat more efficiently and reduced waste. The result: cheaper, better sugar. The method changed the sugar industry — and, later, all kinds of industrial processes — such that some historians compare it to what Eli Whitney’s gin did for cotton.”

"He was not the first black man to get a U.S. patent. In fact, he was turned down for one patent because the patent office thought he was a slave and slaves had no rights. They were considered property and whatever inventions they made belonged top the massa.

"The first black patent honor went to Thomas L. Jennings, a freeman and a tailor who patented the process for modern dry cleaning in 1821. The National Inventors Hall of Fame said on the bicentennial of his patent, “Not only did Jennings manage to acquire a patent in 1821, but he also dedicated much of his earnings to supporting the abolitionist and desegregation movements, helping others defend their rights and achieve their goals.”

"He was civil rights before there were civil rights. Back of the bus? A century before Rosa Parks, his daughter sued to get on the bus. New York City banned blacks from riding in street cars. She won the case. Her lawyer was Chester Arthur, a future president.

"Then there is Robert Smalls, a slave who commandeered a Confederate boat in the Civil War and made his way to freedom. He joined the Navy and eventually became a captain. After the war, he served 5 terms in Congress.

"The point of Black History Month was to build the esteem and reputation of black people, who are one-eighth of the U.S. population. I am cool with that.

"But what about the other seven-eighths of the population? We didn’t sit around eating bonbons while watching slaves pick cotton.

"Consider Italians. Most of them arrived after slavery. They are associated with pizza and the Mafia but they were far more than that." . . .