¿IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH RELEVANT?

Ask older African Americans if the contributions of blacks were highlighted in textbooks, school curricula or the nightly news when they were growing up, and the answer you'll likely hear is a resounding no. For centuries, the role that blacks, not to mention Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans, played in shaping American society was left out of history books. To counteract this problem, historian Carter G. Woodson campaigned for what was known in 1926 as Negro History Week. Later, this week morphed into Black History Month, a time for the nation to recognize the major milestones and key figures in African-American history. But in today's society, where blacks are widely represented in U.S. government, popular culture, literature and elsewhere, the need for Black History Month has been called into question. Is Black History Month still relevant, or worse yet, is it racist? The benefits and drawbacks to celebrating black history may be more complex than you think.

The Argument for Black History Month

The United States is now headed by its first president of African descent. Moreover, blacks are widely represented in government, literature, film, athletics and other arenas. Given this, is it still necessary to set aside a month for the express purpose of celebrating the accomplishments of African Americans? Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates and writer Raina Kelley have both argued in Newsweek that Black History Month deserves to be celebrated, as it not only connects blacks to the struggles endured by forebears but also addresses the progress still to come in the black community.

"These sorts of gestures are necessary to reclaim the past," Gates explained in Newsweek. "Black History Month has been very effective in resurrecting the stories of our ancestors and in integrating those stories into our history. But we're not even on the horizon of the time to end Black History Month. When as many Americans are as familiar with Harriet Tubman as they are with Paul Revere, then we can talk about ending Black History Month."

Kelley noted that she understands why people, even African Americans, question the need for Black History Month, but stresses that the month can remain significant by highlighting the challenges facing black America at present.

"Rather than wasting time bemoaning the existence of Black History Month, why don't we use it to proselytize for the issues that need to be more fully covered and understood the other 337 days of the year-such as failing inner-city public schools, institutionalized poverty, health-care disparities, and job discrimination?" Kelley asks. "Black History Month is a measure of how fully or accurately our story is being told and a reminder of the work yet to be done."

When President Barack Obama proclaimed February 2010 African American History Month, he echoed some of the sentiments expressed by Kelley and Gates about why such a month should be acknowledged.

"Each February, we recognize African American History Month as a moment to reflect upon how far we have come as a nation, and what challenges remain," he remarked. "…In the volumes of black history, much remains unwritten. Let us add our own chapter, full of progress and ambition, so that our children's children will know that we, too, did our part to erase an unjust past and build a brighter future."

The White House makes the celebration of Black History Month relevant by adopting a different theme for the month each year. For instance, the theme for 2010 is "The History of Black Economic Empowerment." Such a theme encourages Americans to look back at how African Americans became entrepreneurs and skilled workers in spite of virulent racism, while pointing out how blacks can navigate the business and employment sectors today.

In his 2010 proclamation of African American History Month, President Obama pointed out how his administration aims to help blacks, and all Americans, by giving credits to small businesses, slashing tax breaks for companies that outsource work and giving breaks to companies that create jobs domestically.

"We are also reinvesting in our schools and making college more affordable, because a world class education is our country's best road map to prosperity," the President remarked.

If Black History Month is used as a platform to outline strategies to help the black community continue advancing, the 28-day celebration can remain relevant. And if the enormous challenges the black community has already confronted are spotlighted during Black History Month, African Americans may have faith that they can continue making progress. Despite potential benefits such as these, Black History Month continues to have its detractors.

The Argument Against Black History Month

Critics of Black History Month argue that the celebration is shallow, racist and "ghettoizes" black contributions to America in one 28-day period. For instance, Black History Month is a time when children learn about black inventors and pioneers such as Benjamin Banneker, an astronomer; or Madame C.J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire. While those studying Black History Month are grilled on the names of African American pioneers, they receive little background on the historical context these heroes lived and prospered in despite deep-seated racism. Moreover, students learning about Black History Month may not understand the significance of Dr. Charles Drew reportedly inventing blood plasma. Without proper perspective, a student learning about Black History Month is armed with a list of names and inventions and little else.

Another reason Black History Month has come under fire is because some consider it to be racist. But is it? Perhaps Black History Month would be racist if its aim was to point out that blacks were superior to other groups. However, Black History Month functions to highlight the oft-overlooked accomplishments of African Americans. The reason there's no White History Month is because the accomplishments of whites and their contributions to society are showcased all year long. In short, Black History Month's goal is to raise awareness.

"Thus, it works in exactly the same way as Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October or Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in June," Kelley writes.

Some critics argue that Black History Month isn't racist because it singles out a particular racial group but because it seems to relegate celebration of African Americans to a mere 28 days. While Black History Month founder Carter G. Woodson designated February as a time to honor blacks (the month contains the birthdays of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and former President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation), he believed that the need to have such a month would one day prove unnecessary. He hoped that African Americans would be so thoroughly integrated into U.S. society that their contributions would no longer require singling out as the years passed.

Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman has taken to task the fact that the U.S. still celebrates Black History Month. In a 2005 "60 Minutes" interview, Freeman called Black History Month ridiculous. "You're going to relegate my history to a month?" he asked. "I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history."

Historians such as the late Ronald Takaki and the late Howard Zinn tried to include the history of African Americans and other racial minority groups in their revisionist writings about American history. While the works of Takaki and Zinn are popular, especially in college courses, the standard history books continue to prominently feature whites while relegating racial minorities to the margins. Until the contributions of minority groups are the focal points of history books rather than footnotes, the need for Black History Month, Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month and the like will remain strong.

 SOURCE: ABOUT DOT COM

THE ORIGIN OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

The origins of Black History Month lay in early 20th-century historian Carter G. Woodson's desire to spotlight the accomplishments of African Americans. Mainstream historians left out African Americans from the narrative of American history up until the 1960s, and Woodson worked his entire career to correct this blinding oversight. His creation of Negro History Week in 1926 paved the way for the establishment of Black History Month in 1976.

Negro History Week

In 1915, Woodson helped found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (today known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History or ASALH). The idea for an organization devoted to black history came to Woodson as he was discussing the release of the racist film The Birth of a Nation. Discussing it with a group of African-American men at a YMCA in Chicago, Woodson convinced the group that African Americans needed an organization that would strive for a balanced history.

The organization began publishing its flagship journal--The Journal of Negro History in 1916, and ten years later, Woodson came up with the plan for a week of activities and commemorations devoted to African-American history. Woodson chose the week of February 7, 1926, for the first Negro History Week because it included the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12), celebrated for the Emancipation Proclamation that freed many American slaves, and abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass (Feb. 14).

Woodson hoped that Negro History Week would encourage better relations between blacks and whites in the United States as well as inspire young African Americans to celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of their ancestors. In The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), Woodson lamented, "Of the hundreds of Negro high schools recently examined by an expert in the United States Bureau of Education only eighteen offer a course taking up the history of the Negro, and in most of the Negro colleges and universities where the Negro is thought of, the race is studied only as a problem or dismissed as of little consequence." Thanks to Negro History Week, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History began to receive requests for more accessible articles; in 1937 the organization began publishing the Negro History Bulletin aimed at African-American teachers who wanted to incorporate black history into their lessons.

Black History Month

African Americans quickly took up Negro History Week, and by the 1960s, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, American educators, both white and black, were observing Negro History Week. At the same time, mainstream historians had begun to expand the American historical narrative to include African Americans (as well as women and other previously ignored groups). In 1976, as the US was celebrating its bicentennial, the ASALH expanded the traditional week-long celebration of African-American history to a month, and Black History Month was born.

That same year, President Gerald Ford urged Americans to observe Black History Month, but it was President Carter who officially recognized Black History Month in 1978. With the federal government's blessing, Black History Month became a regular event in American schools. By the opening decade of the 21st century, however, some were questioning whether Black History Month should be continued, especially after the election of the nation's first African-American president, Barack Obama, in 2008. For instance, in a 2009 article, commentator Byron Williams suggested that Black History Month had become "trite, stale, and pedestrian rather than informative and thought provoking" and served only to relegate " the achievements of African Americans to an adjunct status in American history."

But others continue to argue that the need for Black History Month has not disappeared. Historian Matthew C. Whitaker observed in 2009, "Black History Month, therefore, will never be obsolete. It will always be in our best interest to pause and explore the meaning of freedom through the lived experiences of a people who forced America to be true to its creed and reaffirmed the American dream. Those who would eliminate Black History Month often miss the point."

Woodson would no doubt be pleased by the expansion of the original Negro History Week. His goal in creating Negro History Week was to highlight African-American accomplishments alongside white American accomplishments. Woodson asserted in The Story of the Negro Retold (1935) that the book "is not so much that of Negro history as it is universal history." For Woodson, Negro History Week was about teaching the contributions of all Americans and correcting a national historical narrative that he felt was little more than racist propaganda.

SOURCE: ABOUT DOT COM

¿WHAT IS AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY?

Since the origins of the field in the late 19th century, historians and intellectuals have offered various answers to the question: "what is African-American history?" Some have seen it as an extension or corollary to American history, some have stressed the influence of Africa on African-American history and still others have viewed African-American history as vital to black liberation and power.

Late 19th Century

An Ohio lawyer and minister, George Washington Williams, published the first serious work of African-American history in 1882. His work, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, began with the arrival of the first slaves in the North American colonies and concentrated on the major events in American history that involved or affected African Americans. Washington, in his "Note" to volume two of his opus, said that his purpose was to "to lift the Negro race to its pedestal in American history" as well as "to instruct the present, inform the future."

During this period of history, most African Americans, like Frederick Douglass  stressed their identities as Americans and did not look to Africa as a source of history and culture, according to historian Nell Irvin Painter. This was true of historians like Washington as well, but during the early decades of the 20th century and especially during the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans, including historians, began to celebrate Africa's history as their own.

The Harlem Renaissance, or The New Negro Movement

W.E.B. Du Bois was the foremost African-American historian during this period. In works like The Souls of Black Folk, he stressed African-American history as the confluence of three different cultures: African, American and African-American. Du Bois's historical works, such as The Negro (1915), began the history of African Americans in Africa.

One of Du Bois's contemporaries, historian Carter G. Woodson, created the forerunner of today's Black History Month--Negro History Week--in 1926. While Woodson felt that Negro History Week should emphasize the influence of African Americans on American history, he, too, in his historical works looked back to Africa. A professor at Howard University between 1922 and 1959, William Leo Hansberry, developed this trend even further: he conceptualized African-American history as the experience of the African diaspora.

During the Harlem Renaissance, artists, poets, novelists and musicians also looked toward Africa as a source of history and culture. For instance, artist Aaron Douglas regularly used African themes in his paintings and murals.

Black Liberation and African-American History

In the 1960s and 1970s, activists and intellectuals, like Malcolm X, saw African-American history as an essential component of black liberation and power. In a 1962 speech, Malcolm explained: "The thing that has made the so-called Negro in America fail, more than any other thing, is your, my, lack of knowledge concerning history. We know less about history than anything else." As Pero Dagbovie argues in African American History Reconsidered, many black intellectuals and scholars, such as Harold Cruse, Sterling Stuckey and Vincent Harding, agreed with Malcolm that African Americans needed to understand their past in order to seize the future.

Post-Sixties Era

White academia finally accepted African-American history in the 1960s, and it was during that decade that many universities and colleges began to offer classes and programs in African-American studies and history. The field exploded, and American history textbooks began to incorporate African-American history (as well as women's and Native American history) into their standard narratives.

As a sign of the increasing visibility and importance of the field of African-American history, President Gerald Ford declared February to be "Black History Month" in 1974. Since then, both black and white historians have built on the work of earlier African-American historians, exploring the influence of Africa on the lives of African Americans, creating the field of black women's history and revealing the myriad ways in which the story of the United States is the story of race relations.

History in general has expanded to include the working class, women, Native Americans and Latino Americans in addition to the experiences of African Americans. Some historians concentrate solely on telling the history of the human impact on the environment or the history of labor. All of these histories have become intertwined in today's U.S. history textbooks.

African-American history, as practiced today, is interconnected with all of these other sub-fields in U.S. history. Many of today's historians would probably agree with Du Bois's inclusive definition of African-American history as the interaction among African, American and African-American peoples and cultures.

SOURCE: ABOUT DOT COM