On February 24^th, 2015, students and staff at Dominion High School celebrated the end of Black History Month by inviting percussionist Derek Rose to share the African heritage and culture through music.

Rose grew up in New Orleans and attended Tennessee State University. During Rose’s first year in college, he joined the African Drum ensemble. Ever since then, Rose has traveled the world to visit and teach students in schools all across the US.

Rose stated during his presentation, “Learning the roots of music is important.” Many students agreed with this statement, such as student Christy Cannon who believes that “it’s important for us to learn about our history to see how much our world has changed. Assemblies like this one give us an opportunity for a more hands-on learning experience.”

During the presentation, Rose demonstrated how each of the different drums worked. He also shared the history behind each instrument, and explained what each instrument was used for. At one point Rose stated, “Drums and bells were used for communication before technology was widespread and popular.”

After Rose finished demonstrating each instrument, he called up several students in groups to play alongside him. Over twenty students got the chance to play a variety of differnet instruments in an African song alongside Rose.

Cannon said that the Black History Month presentation was, “Very entertaining. I liked the fact that the speaker brought up people from the audience to participate in the drumming.” She also believes that “DHS should hold more assemblies with guest speakers because it’s a good learning experience.”

Throughout the month of February leading up to the assembly, several videos were played on the morning announcements about different African American historical figures. The videos were compiled by student Ranjit Virk, who played and chose the videos.

The videos were made in Mr. Hicks’ classroom during the 2013-2014 academic year, and were played during the previous and present school years. Hicks said the end goal of the project was “so that they [the students] could get a fuller understanding of important Black figures. They knew that if they made a good video, their presentation would be played on the morning announcements. The project helped them learn how to create a well-made multimedia presentation.”

Some of the individuals spotlighted during black history month were Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Jackie Robinson.

Virk stated, “The hope was that by showing them [students] the videos they would appreciate what Black History month represents and trials and tribulations during that time and how thankful we should be that such blatant racism is no longer a part of our culture.”