Catholic Center celebrating Black History Month

As a black woman, Debbie Plummer is a minority in the Catholic Church.

But she's always felt valued.

"The belief of the Catholic Church is that all people are children of God and valued. The dignity of the human person is important in the Catholic Church," said Plummer, a retired nurse.

That tenet is demonstrated in the annual Black History Celebration scheduled for this Sunday at the Catholic Center at the University of Georgia, the fourth time the church has hosted the afternoon event.

"You don't have to be Catholic to come to the celebration. It's a wonderful time for anybody," Plummer said.

The celebration, started by the Rev. David Hyman, a priest at the Catholic Center, is more celebration than ceremony, with jazz performances and poetry readings mixed into topical lectures and remembrances.

"People just came out of the woodwork (the first few celebrations)," Plummer said. "Two men played John Coltrane music. An artist from Lamar Dodd (School of Art at UGA) did a slide show of African-American art in Athens, including work of a man on Rocksprings who does yard art. ... It's a little bit of everything."

The celebration is meant to touch on different aspects and locales of black culture - from yard art less than a mile away to folk tales told in Africa.

Hyman brought the idea with him when he came to Athens from an African-American church in Greenville, S.C.

"I came here with my appetite for black culture. Twenty-five of my 50 years (in the

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