• Even after the contests in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont are decided tonight, Hillary Clinton warns of a long, long road to the nomination. Oh. Yay. [NYT]

• How to present Bill Cosby with special Black History Month Air Force Ones. [KATC]

• 50 Cent, Floyd Mayweather, Wrestlemania, whatever, whatever, and whatever. [XXL]

• She who giveth (big) shall taketh away viewers from other shows. [SP]

• Oops! Police officers should really turn the camera's off before letting loose with the death threats and racial epithets. [GN]

• Rihanna loves her butt. Chris Brown probably does, too. Unless their relationship is all fake. [People]

• The Williams sisters of golf. They already look like they're trying to come up with names for their future fashion lines. [Jezebel]

• February is over, but black history doesn't stop! [BV]

• Surely Kim Kardashian had no idea the cameras were snapping away behind her. That homeless guy got lucky, though. [Bossip]

• The Game checked into jail. I'm sure the other inmates will be so nice to him! [MTV]

Last month, I realized with a sense of doom that Black History Month was rapidly approaching. I knew that I had to address the month on Stereohyped, but I had no idea how to do it in a way that wouldn't be completely trite. That's where the doom came in. I figured it I was going to participate in a month-long affair whose purpose many people — myself included, sometimes — question, I should at least learn something in the process. So I decided to write a daily post that highlighted a figure in black history (usually Black American history) that got glazed over when historians decided who would and wouldn't become bold names in our text books, and crossed my fingers that it wouldn't come across as totally cheesy, uncharacteristically earnest, and boring. Well, it was often cheesy and uncharacteristically earnest, but the reception from you all, not to mention other bloggers, has been overwhelmingly positive. And I swear I wouldn't have gotten through the month if it weren't for your helpful suggestions.

CONTINUED »

CHRIS WEBBER'S OFF-COURT HOBBY NBA veteran Chris Webber has taken a page out of Charles Blockson's book and amassed his own private collection of African American artifacts, some dating back to the 18th century. A postcard sent from Malcolm X to Alex Haley and a a first edition of Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, dated 1773, are among his prized possessions, which he was able to purchase thanks to his hefty NBA salary. "Both children and adults know Chris Webber as a basketball player … but many don't know Chris Webber as a collector," says Bamidele Demerson, director of education, research, and exhibitions at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History in Detroit (www.maah-detroit.org), where Webber has shown portions of his collection. "To have a person of his stature involved in the collection of artifacts and documents gives an awareness that we can all do this … that it's OK also for them to collect documents and artifacts that tell their story." His collection is currently on display at the Central Library in Sacramento, Calif.

When 74-year-old Charles Blockson was in the 4th grade, his teacher told him that black people hadn't contributed anything to history, and he has spent the rest of his life trying to prove her on. Fast forward 65 years, and Blockson has amassed a unique library of 30,000 historical items, some of which date back to the 16th century. The Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, which is housed at Temple University, includes African Bibles, slave narratives, Paul Robeson's sheet music, and a first-edition book by W.E.B. Dubois.

Scholars are lucky that Blockson began collecting when he did, said F. Keith Bingham, archivist at historically black Cheyney University near Philadelphia. Many items in the collection might not be available now or would be prohibitively expensive, he said.

Last fall, the University of South Carolina paid $35,000 for a first-edition book by black poet Phillis Wheatley, a slave who once read her work in the presence of George Washington. Blockson said he paid a sliver of that when he acquired his copy 40 years ago.

Today, his collection includes valuable books, pamphlets, posters, taped interviews, artwork and more than 500,000 photographs.

Among the rare acquisitions: a copy of Dale Carnegie's "Lincoln the Unknown." The book's jacket has a patch of tanned skin from a black man, which is embossed with the title.

By 2006, the collection had grown so large it needed to be moved to a larger space. Blockson's book Damn Rare: Memoirs of an African-American Bibliophile details his life-long quest. [MSNBC]

A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!

During World War I, Bessie Coleman was a 20-something manicurist in Chicago who was tantalized by tales of fighter pilots returning home from Europe. Inspired by their stories, Coleman longed to go to flight school, but American schools wouldn't admit her because she was a black woman. Sponsored by a wealthy real estate mogul, Coleman went to school to learn French and, in 1920, moved to Paris, where she became the first African American woman in the world to earn her pilot's license.

In the following years, Coleman made a name for herself doing exhibition flying in air shows, where her daredevil stunts earned her the name Queen Bess. Her dream was to establish an American aviation school for blacks, but she never got to fulfill it. She died in a plane crash in 1926 at the age of 34.

This concludes your daily dose of BHM.

As a rash of racist incidents and noose-hangings plagued the country late last year, I imagine G.W. Bush and his advisers sat around the Oval Office, twiddling their thumbs, saying, "Eh. Let's wait to address this until around the middle of Black History Month." And that's what they did.

Yesterday, Bush took his anti-noose stance public at a BHM event honoring Civil Rights hero John Lewis.

"The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history," Bush said in an event marking African-American history month at the White house.

"The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice," the president said. "Displaying one is not a harmless prank, and lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest. [Take that, Kelly Tilghman! -- Ed]"

Just so he never has to make this sort of speech again, Bush later took a firm stand against swastikas and those who insist on calling all Asian people Chinese. [MSNBC]

• Rihanna got in a car accident! Don't worry, her hair's okay. [EXTRA]

• In honor of BHM, Prince Paul is hosting a white girl party. If you bring a white girl, you both "get in for the price of one person," which basically means the white girl gets in free. It's really a shame I won't be in town for this. [TAN]

• Black people and comedy. There's a lot of material there. [Racialicious]

• Hillary Clinton sees a "troubling pattern." [MTV]

• Mya's officially Broadway-bound. [SP]

• Some (white) Southern Democrats "wish there was someone worth voting for." Hmmm. [NYT]

• I love it when Fox Newsies get all sappy about the Democratic race. [FOX]

• Racism is alive in El Paso, TX. Just so you know. [EPT]

• Nooses on a baseball field! America's pastime… [WP]

• Happy Black-History-Month-Although-Every-Month-Should-Be-Black-History-Month!

• Kim Kardashian finally gets what's coming to her. [MG]

• More beauty pageant sour grapes: a white Miss DC USA contestant blames her loss on being "too pale" for the Chocolate City crown, instead of the more obvious "not good enough." [Jezebel]

• Nas has pushed the release of his album Nigger from December to February, just in time for Black History Month. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King, Jr., are somewhere in heaven performing a joy-filled cakewalk in honor of this wondrous news. [XXL]

• Chris Brown likes the cougars. This works out fine, because the cougars really like him. [C&D]

• Fingers crossed that Janet Jackson's new album is actually worth a listen. [SOHH]