The History of Black History Month
Author’s Note: As we enter the final three months of the commemoration of the documented year (1619) when Africans first “landed” on what is now US soil, exactly 400 years ago, it is more necessary than ever to keep the historical fires burning as we begin a fifth century of struggle.
So far this year, a number of scholars, writers, public policy analysts, assorted thinkers, pundits, and just plain folks, have provided deeply insightful and incisive perspectives on this seminal year and the preceding four centuries. Kudos to all.
This essay hopes to serve as a brief reminder that “black history” is a living, breathing, and an ever-growing soulful being, at once separate from yet integral to not just “American” but world history as well. Under the logic of white supremacy, such remembrances are constantly required because black history has only been taken seriously by so-called “mainstream” historians and historiographers within the last few years, and only then due to the insistence and persistence of black people themselves.
But, at this late date, and it may already be too late, it must needs be obvious to all that unless and until “America” finally, once and for all time, comes to grips with its whole history, including most especially its long neglected, ignored, hidden, and denied “original sins” of native land theft, native…
