Heroes come in all forms. Men and women serving their nation in the military; law enforcement officers and emergency service volunteers and workers; average citizens who sometimes risk their safety to help those trapped in a house fire or car wreck.

Sometimes, though, heroes are harder to recognize, easier to overlook.

February is Black History Month, which is a specific time each year set aside to review and learn from the achievements of black Americans.

Lessons built around Black History Month often revolve around Abraham Lincoln, the president who held the nation together as the question of the legality and morality of slavery threatened to tear the country apart; or around Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and other nationally known figures during the Civil Rights Movement.

What they should include are reflections on local heroes, like Elaine Joyce-Norris, a local resident who participated in what become known as a sit-in at a Mount Airy business. She and many of her friends more than 40 years ago decided to test the new limits of the Civil Rights Acts, which decreed all people must be treated equally, no matter the color of their skin.

Those lessons should include a look at local people, black and white, who looked past color decades ago, and still do today, to ensure our community is one in which all are treated equally. The hope for those lessons, of course, is that we reach a point where those lessons are no longer needed.

That starts in the home, where the first attitudes of how we eventually view other people are formed. Parents, more than any other entity in a person’s life, help form those early viewpoints on the world. And parents, at least those who are there for their children, trying to instill a belief in fairness and racial colorblindness in their kids, are the ones who will eventually be the biggest heroes.