Black History Month
In 1976, President Gerald Ford, in officially recognizing Black History Month, called on Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
This statement served as the national notice for what had been a growing movement, and one that had been spearheaded as early as 1926 by Carter G. Woodson and what was then known as the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. In the 1920s, Woodson desired to set aside the second week of February as an opportunity to recollect the important people and events associated with the African diaspora, and he had chosen the second week of February specifically because of the birthdays of Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln.
Academically, Woodson’s work culminated not only in an institute, but in a collection titled Journal of Negro History. Woodson wrote here and elsewhere of his concern for “the physical and intellectual survival of the race within broader society.” He wrote, for instance, that, “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile traditions; it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated. The American Indian left no continuous record. He did not appreciate the value of tradition; and where is he today? The Hebrew keenly appreciated the value of tradition, as is attested by the Bible itself. In spite of worldwide persecution, therefore, he is a great factor in our civilization.”
Despite a desire to draw greater attention to both the sufferings and successes of an often maligned and maltreated people, the question of how to have these conversations, either within the confines of formal education or society at large, has been controversial for nearly as long as the notion of setting aside a time to do so was first proposed. Woodson himself was not uncontroversial, but nearly ninety years later, the public debate continues: Is black history a subset of American history? Is the goal of studying black history awareness? The objective pursuit of truth? Racial reconciliation or separation? Perhaps most pointedly within living memory, the actor Morgan Freeman exchanged views with Mike Wallace in 2005 during which he described the idea of Black History Month as “ridiculous” and asked Wallace, who was Jewish, whether he would like his history relegated to a single month. Freeman concluded by declaring that “black history is American history.”
Having now read Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail with students for nearly fifteen years in history, government, rhetoric, and moral philosophy, one of the passages that stands out most to me is King’s comments about his own daughter. He writes about seeing “the ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky,” and to “see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people.” Why is it, among the many important and impressive passages of this letter, that this is the one that continues to resonate most strongly?
I think that it is because hating ultimately proves destructive to a human being every bit as much as being hated, and the one cannot help but inspire the other. As Booker T. Washington wrote, “I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” In our least promising moments, we imagine that hating others will diminish them. It does the opposite, and Washington, who had more reason for hating than most, knew this.
If we love our children, which we surely do, we must endeavor to educate them in such a way that they can comprehend the moral blunders and absurdities of our history and the titanic consequences of these in a way that allows them to surmount the past rather to be emotionally stunted and deformed by it. No one’s history should be forgotten, and every child should be educated in order that he or she might easily recognize the equal and unalienable rights of his fellows. It is, moreover, hardly incomprehensible that blacks should desire for their history to receive special acknowledgement since it has for so long received essentially no acknowledgement. They were regarded as a people to whom things happened—not a people who made things happen, and largely to Woodson’s point, they were susceptible to marginalization because neither they nor the white majority that they lived amidst had much understanding of their history: where they came from, the notable men and women among them, the trials and tribulations they endured, and the successes, innovations, and achievements attributable to them. The achievement of Woodson and many others who have sought to document this history and preserve it for posterity are of great note. By their efforts, that history can be recalled and provide our society, by a paradoxical acknowledgement of race and also regardless of it, a manner of moving forward with greater dignity and mutual respect than that with which we have lived with heretofore. That we are connected, Frederick Douglas memorably reminded us: “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.” In our celebration of a national motto like E pluribus unum, we move forward together, or not at all.
It is therefore a matter of how we go about communicating this history to our students, one that is interwoven with the histories of many people of varying races and a myriad of religious and political beliefs. While we may see black history highlighted in February by ongoing discussions of Martin Luther King, Jr. that have carried over from January, or reading Douglas’ The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglas in fifth grade, or I Sing, America or I, Too, the more enduring and important examination of black history is what has been interspersed throughout the Core Knowledge curriculum. Nevertheless, February also sees students learning about the painter Jacob Lawrence in art and the jazz, blues, and other musicians that influenced and changed the musical canon. Again, it is important that the stories of blacks are shown to be about more than what has happened to them, but how they have shaped and changed our culture.
Sadly, the African diaspora that Woodson set out to document does come to play early in American history. In 1526, Spanish explorer and trader Lucas Vasquez de Allyón brought 600 colonists to what is present-day Georgia, and among them were the first slaves transported to North America from the African continent. By 1619, we know that twenty Africans from what is now Angola arrived in the American colonies. The population of slaves increased dramatically in the 1600s, and by 1641 and 1661 both Massachusetts and Virginia had explicit laws regarding the owning of slaves. This history is part of what students learn about the European colonization of North America, and from this complex history, they go on to read about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, the controversy between free and slave states; about Harriet Beecher Stowe, Clara Barton, Abraham Lincoln, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Mary McLeod Bethune, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. They read of not only what was endured, but what was achieved in the stories of Jackie Robinson, or the contributions to NASA by Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, and Mary Jackson. Sometimes in history, tribulation comingles with accomplishment: what can one do but marvel at the achievement of the March to Selma while simultaneously regretting the necessity of it? History is oftentimes unsettling in this way. For instance, the writing of Frederick Douglas or Booker T. Washington—the power of their rhetoric, the organization and articulation of their thoughts, and the restraint of pure pathos, would be impressive were they to have written on any subject, but that circumstances should have found them writing on this topic is both admirable and regrettable.
This is clearly not an exhaustive list, and despite all that is done to enlighten students, some will ask, “Is it enough?” In the matter of education, who can seriously answer this question in the affirmative? Of subjects that are likely to make one more humane, what is enough knowledge? If we are likely to be made more compassionate, more just, more sincere in our regard for one another, who would countenance being limited by any force besides time?
In the case of the past, there can only be thoughtful and honest inquiry with the intention to live differently and better now than before. Given the troubles of our times, it is a thing to be hoped for that we can, in observing occasions like the one before us, bequeath to our children and their descendants the knowledge and wisdom necessary to avoid the injustices and inequities of our past. We hope, of course, that we are entering upon this work with honest partners of good will.
D. Anderson
Principal
