I have decided to do a Black History Month Initiative called “Give Them Flowers”. It all started from me making a simple Facebook post asking the Lansing community who they thought were some notable black people in Lansing who deserved some recognition for doing THE WORK. The responses were overwhelming with over 344 comments! I did not expect that but I said you know what, why not take it a step further. 

So here is what I came up with. I would gather as many names as I could. I managed to snag and create a list of 165 people from that post and put them into a website wheel generator. So to be unbiased with my decision of who received flowers I put everyone on this wheel and just let God take the wheel, literally.

So once your name has been drawn you will receive your flowers and someone from the black community will step up and deliver you flowers or I will myself. I decided when I did this that I was going to do it alone but at the last minute I made another post asking people to join in on it and I received about 10 people who said they would. These are my “Givers” and they are community members who deliver these flowers just to show their appreciation, paying for the flowers, delivering, and writing a short note for each person that gets drawn by the wheel.

I saw this as a perfect opportunity to show unity within the community and get people familiar with new faces that they might have not known before.