Black history is particularly important in the US. As Sara Clarke Kaplan, executive director of American University’s Antiracist Research & Policy Center in Washington, D.C., once said: “There is no American history without African American history,” as it is intrinsically linked to “everything we think of as ‘American history.”
America’s annual celebration of Black History Month has been going since 1928, but how many of us are aware of its true origins? If you wonder how it all began and have other questions about Black History Month, this is the blog post to answer it all for you.
What’s the actual history behind Black History Month?
Historian Carter G. Woodson is the man behind what is now Black History Month, and is known as “the father of Black history”. He set out to create a celebration of Black history in 1926 and succeeded in creating “Negro History Week” which saw its inaugural celebration in 1928. Woodson initially envisioned public schools spending a week teaching a coordinated Black history syllabus.
He eventually chose the second week of February as Negro History Week and used his Association For The Study Of Negro Life And History (which later became ASALH) to encourage other historians to take up the cause.
The cause: bringing the impact of Black American history to the public’s consciousness, and make Black history a respected area of historical study
Negro History Week wouldn’t become Black History Month until the late 1960s, a time that saw numerous protests against racial injustice, inequality, and anti-imperialism in the US. Almost fifty years on from Carter G Woodson’s inaugural Negro History Week, President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month and encouraged citizens of America to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
But, why February?
Other countries have their own Black History Month. Canada, for instance, also celebrates Black history in February, while the UK celebrates theirs in October. So, how did Carter G Woodson land on February for his Negro History Week?
Apparently Woodson chose February in recognition of the prominent roles Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass played in Black American history. Lincoln was instrumental in emancipation of slaves, while Douglass was a former slave who became a big voice in the abolitionist movement which helped to end slavery. And they were both born in the second week of February, the week Woodson eventually chose for his Negro History Week.
Isn’t it time we treat Black history as just part of history?
Maybe. Forty years after Ford’s message, President Barack Obama said as much in an address from the White House – the place Michelle Obama said had been built by slaves. Barack Obama proclaimed: “Black History Month shouldn’t be treated as though it is somehow separate from our collective American history or somehow just boiled down to a compilation of greatest hits from the March on Washington or from some of our sports heroes.”
Obama continued: “It’s about the lived, shared experience of all African Americans, high and low, famous and obscure, and how those experiences have shaped and challenged and ultimately strengthened America.”
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if we didn’t need to dedicate a month to recognize the impact made by Black Americans? Imagine speaking about historical American figures in the context of history, and not separated by race. Usually, when Douglass is spoken of, it is in relation to Martin Luther King. These men were separated by fifty years. It is rare that Lincoln and Douglass are mentioned in the same breath, although they were contemporaries.
Maybe the next step is to make it so every historical figure, regardless of race, is discussed in the context of history. Historically significant people, real people, brilliant people with flaws, passions, regrets, personalities, working with each other, against each other, pursuing their ideals and following their instincts as part of a complex, interconnected network of stories. Not just the same faces and names rolled out on “Black History” lists every February.
Can Walter Mosley take his place alongside the likes of Agatha Christie and Elmore Leonard as one of the great mystery writers? Or will he continue to be lumped in with Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King as another famous black person to be dusted off for February before being returned to the back of the bookstore for the next eleven months?
It’s different each year. What’s that about?
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) administers Black History Month and fulfils its founder Carter G Woodson’s vision of a different theme each February. 2024’s theme was “African Americans and the Arts”. The theme in 2025 is “African Americans and Labor”.
The African Americans and Labor theme is designed to highlight the way work intersects with Black American culture. The theme is meant to focus the mind on all the different types of work (paid, unpaid, skilled, unskilled, voluntary, vocational) and explore how work informs the experience of the Black American.
According to ASALH: “work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture. Be it the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans that fed Low Country colonies, debates among Black educators on the importance of vocational training, self-help strategies and entrepreneurship in Black communities, or organized labor’s role in fighting both economic and social injustice, Black people’s work has been transformational throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora.”
Does America still need Black History Month?
For his documentary More Than A Month, Shukree Hassan Tilghman filmed himself walking the streets of New York wearing a sandwich board and seeking signatures for his petition. On the front of his placard was written: “End Black History Month”. Unsurprisingly, he wanted signatures for his petition to end the annual celebration of Black History.
However, on the back of his sandwich board was written: “Black history is American history.”
Many people take the view that having a month dedicated to Black history means conceding the other eleven months of the year to White history. Some view this less as a celebration of Black history, and more as a form of segregation that has survived into the 21st century.
However, Karsonya Wise Whitehead, a founding director of the Karson Institute for Race, Peace, and Social Justice at Loyola University, believes Woodson “understood that for Black students, to see themselves beyond their current situation, they had to be able to learn about the contributions that their ancestors had made to this country”.
Remembering school, Whitehead said: “You’re lining the halls with all this Black art that would then get taken down when February ended.” Tokenism aside, she maintains Black History Month is necessary because there are still places, “where if you didn’t have Black History Month, there would be no conversations at all.”
Whitehead believes that although it falls short of being the solution America needs, Black History month is better than nothing.
“We want Black history to be American history,” she says. “But we understand that without Black History Month, then they will not teach it within the American history curriculum.”
As far as Tilghman is concerned, if it is true that Black History would not be taught in American public schools were it not for Black History Month, “then we have a larger problem that is not Black History Month. And that’s not actually a reason to keep Black History Month.”
Tilghman says: “That’s a reason to fight for something better than Black History Month.”
Albert Broussard, a professor of Afro-American history, has a more positive outlook and view of Black History Month: “There’s never been a time where Black people and others should not celebrate Black history… this is an opportunity to learn.”
Ernest Crim III is a Black teacher in a suburban Chicago school, teaching Black, Latino and white students. He says: “Woodson created Negro History Week with a particular purpose. So that we could come together and discuss what we’ve been doing all year round, not to celebrate it for one week, which eventually became a month.”
Crim believes the teaching of history is “about changing your thoughts and that can change your entire generation. That can change your family.
“That could change, just the trajectory of your entire life,” he says.
With dedicated people like Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Shukree Hassan Tilghman, and Ernest Crim III keeping the conversation alive, Black History Month has the power to continue asking questions about history, about the stories that America tells itself about itself. As long as those uncomfortable questions are being asked, you might conclude that’s still progress.
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