It’s a cool February night as people went into the night donned a wide array of apparel, from formal dress to Los Angeles Lakers gear. The packed crowd came that night to University of the Pacific’s Faye Spanos center to hear none other than the National Basketball Association’s all time leading scorer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

While many came to see the retired athlete for his storied athletic career, his time with the Lakers was the minority of what he discussed. As a speaker for the university’s Black History Month series, Jabbar talked about his interest of history and the achievement of black Americans.

“A lot of the goals that Martin Luther King Jr. and others talked about…we’re only halfway there,” Jabbar said. There was a sense throughout the presentation that the progress of accepting African American achievements throughout history has come a long way, but there is still a lot of work left to be done.

Jabbar’s interest in history, especially African American history, came when he was a very young age, despite not having much background on the subject. “My family never explained to me in detail the history of black Americans,” Jabbar said. It was during  his junior year of high school while in Harlem that he was exposed to it the most. Jabbar participated in workshops that  “challenged kids in Harlem to make it a better place.” While the workshops worked to create community involvement, Jabbar learned about the Harlem Renaissance, the subject that would become a main point in one of his books.

His most recent book, “What Color is my World? The Lost History of African American Inventors”, emphasizes creativity and learning among children. “When you ask a person today who invented the lightbulb, they’ll say Thomas Edison, when really it was Louis Latimer who did more for the improvement of the invention,” he said. Since his retirement, he has written a total of eight books, five  of which have to do with the history of African Americans in different parts of American history.

Jabbar has since won a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image award and became of “critic of popular culture.” A title that came to him after he criticized the HBO series Girls for being set in Brooklyn, yet having no African Americans in the cast.

While the majority of the event talked about black history, Jabbar also spent time discussing how to improve the community, something that ties into the city of Stockton. When asked by an audience member on how community involvement can be strengthened, his answer was simple. “The first step to building a better community starts with the people,” he said. “You can’t wait for someone to fix the community.”

Jabbar emphasized an Ashanti proverb that “sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.” He used this as a metaphor to apply to communities across the country. “When we have the support of the community, we are unbreakable.” And as another Black History Month comes and goes, this is the attitude that many are taking when moving forward in a more accepting world.