What People Get Wrong About Black History Month

One Hundred Years of Teaching the Truth

When it comes to Black History Month, there are two wrong assumptions that people repeat with confidence every year:

“They gave us the shortest month of the year!”

AND

“I celebrate Black History 365!”

As if Black History Month is an outmoded trend designed to satisfy white liberals and pacify Black folks.

There is so much more to the origins of the Black History Month tradition that we need to elevate and teach, especially when it comes to these two common misconceptions.

First of all, white folks didn’t “give us” anything! Know that. Black people celebrated their history and culture without permission from the powers that be. We unconsciously give white people power they do not possess when we complain about the whites who “gave us the shortest month of the year.”

Many people are aware of the origins of Black History Month, which began as “Negro History Week” in 1926. This was five years after thousands of white folks destroyed the Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was ten years after Marcus Garvey arrived in Harlem and ignited the largest Black social movement with the slogan, “Up You Mighty Race! You can accomplish what you will!

Negro History Week emerged eleven years after the release of the film The Birth of a Nation, which celebrated the Ku Klux Klan before adoring fans across the country, including at the White House. It was just sixty-one years since the abolition of slavery. 1926 was also the same year that independent historian, Drusilla Dunjee Houston, published Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, making her the first Black woman to author a multi-volume series. By 1926, more than 3,000 Black people had been lynched in the United States.

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“There Would Be No Lynching If It Did Not Start in the Schoolroom.”
- Dr. Carter G. Woodson

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The Association of the Study of Negro Life and History, which was founded in 1915 and led by Carter G. Woodson, established Negro History Week in February when Black people were already holding celebrations for two heroic figures - Abraham Lincoln (who was born on February 12th) and abolitionist Frederick Douglass who was deprived of the knowledge of his birth as a person who was born into the savagery of racial slavery. Douglass chose February 14th as his birthday and reclaimed his humanity.

In a way, the establishment of Negro History Week coopted the Lincoln and Douglass commemorations by expanding the focus to include the people’s history - Black people’s history. Capturing that particular week in February also disrupted individual hero-worship and shifted focus towards the collective - and a Black and proud collective at that.

In the late 1960s, at the height of the Black Power era, Black students and educators advanced the expansion of Negro History Week to Black History Month. Notably, the federal government first recognized Black History Month in 1976 under President Gerald Ford.

The idea of “Black history 365” might sound original and perhaps even radical to many people, but the early Negro History Week celebrations tell another side to the story: “Been there and done that.”

For many folks, Negro History Week was like the grand finale. It was a coordinated effort that was organized across the country to showcase Back history and research that the people conducted over the course of the year. At least that was Woodson’s vision from the start.

His goal was to mobilize a Black history tradition that would be infused within school curricula, community programs, and the socialization of all children. In fact, Woodson envisioned the celebration of Negro History Year.

The idea of Black History 365 was already in the hearts and minds of the thousands of Black people who joined Black history clubs in communities all across the country in the early twentieth century. The Association attempted to coordinate those efforts through Negro History Week, and it set the theme for the year, a practice that is now a century old.

In the past five years, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (now known as ASALH) organized Black History Month themes to include African Americans and the Vote; the Black Family; Black Health and Wellness; Black Resistance; African Americans and the Arts; and African Americans and Labor. Black history 365 was the sentiment among the self-trained historians, teachers, archivists, librarians, and community intellectuals who prepared exhibits, newsletters, pamphlets, lessons, and other materials to highlight and celebrate Black knowledge, research, and culture.

The naysayers might think they are sharing something bold, and the “wide-awake Negroes,” as Woodson called the lot, think they are saying something new and radical, but our ancestors modeled a tradition that was about the scientific study of Black life and history all year long and meeting the people where they are.

One hundred years later, the mission continues. And no one is going to give us anything. We will struggle and fight and be.