Day 1 - Black History Month - Why Are We Still Celebrating This?

I don't ever remember celebrating black history month when I was in school. 

I don't ever remember anybody even mentioning it.

I thought it was a pretty new thing, and that was why I hadn't heard of it when I was a kid.

Maybe the schools I attended did celebrate it and it just made no impression on me.

I could not recall ever hearing about this until I was older, and I don't even remember how much older.

When did we start celebrating this?

Why did we start celebrating this?

Who started celebrating this?

How did we even get to a Black History Month?

Here is what I learned.

Carter G Woodson

 The seeds of Black History Month were planted by a historian by the name of Dr. Carter G. Woodson.

He was born in 1875, got a BA from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Harvard in history.

He was quite annoyed as a historian, that black folks were missing from American History. The textbooks of the day, as well as all of the scholarly literature, completely erased African Americans from the picture. One would never know that black folks had contributed anything to the American story. 

(I remember only two: George Washington Carver and Martin Luther King Jr. No black women were mentioned, and no other politicians, inventors or anything.) 

Dr. Woodson decided to change that. 

In 1915 he and some of his friends established The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

in 1916 the association produced The Journal of Negro History which is still in publication and is now called The Journal of African American History.

source

After publishing the journal for ten years, Dr. Woodson fought for Negro History Week to be held in February. The reason being that Lincoln's birthday was the 12th of February and Fredrick Douglass is accepted to have been born on the 14th of February. 

The whole idea for this week was to encourage Americans to learn something about the contributions of African Americans to the history of our country. Mayors across the country started issuing yearly proclamations about it.

In 1950, Dr. Woodson passed away, but the seeds he'd planted lived beyond him.

In the late1960's during the height of civil disobedience when African Americans were fighting for basic civil rights, some college campuses across the country expanded the idea of Negro History Week to the entire month of February.

Seoul Korea

In 1976, I was in Seoul Korea. Apparently, that was the first year African American History Month was recognized nationally by President Gerald Ford.

President Ford called on the country to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

You might ask...

Do we still need this?

Why is it so important?

Isn't a month a bit excessive?

Doesn't everybody already know that black folks must have done something worthwhile in history?

Well, there is this guy in our government...

Steve King in the House of Representatives in 2016 to illustrate his point that only white people have made significant contributions to civilization said this:

“This whole business does get a little tired. I would ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people you are talking about. Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”

The House just called him to the carpet for saying he was uncertain when the term White Nationalist became a bad thing. Yes, he is representing Iowa. The folks in his district have been sending him to Washington for over a decade.

He is not alone in this belief that there has been no significant contribution in our society by POC.

Black History Month is not about forgiveness or an excuse not to teach the actual history of what it has meant to be black in America.

Black history is about taking a moment to remember that our country's history is dynamic and everybody who had ancestors here helped build it even if our textbooks keep forgetting to tell the whole story somehow.

This year I will post once a day about someone who has brought light to the darkness.

- The ABC's of Black History Month.

Day 1 - The ABC's of Black History Month

Day 2 - Archie Alphonso Alexander - Mathematician/Engineer

Day 3 - Sarah Boone - Inventor and Domestic Goddess
Day 4 - Charles R. Drew - Blood Man
Day 5 - Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner - Inventor of The Sanitary Pad

Day 6 - Ernest Everett Just - Biologist, Zoologist, Cell man
Day 7 - Frederick McKinley Jones - The Coolest Man in Modern History

Day 8 - Sarah Goode - A Practical Bed For Small Spaces
Day 9 - William Henry Cling - Did He Invent The Hospital Bed Before Gatch?
Day 10 - Inez Beverly Prosser and Brown V.S. The Board of Education
Day 11 - Jan Ernst Mateliger - Mechanical Engineer/Sole Man
Day 12 - Samuel L. Kountz Jr. - Revolutionized Transplant Surgery
Day 13 - Lewis Howard Latimer - Incandescent Inventor
Day 14 - Marie Van Brittan Brown - Home Security
Day 15 - Norbert Rillieux - Sugar Man
Day 16 - Otis Boykin - He Kept Hearts Beating
Day 17 - Alice H. Parker - Heating It Up!
Day 18 - Lloyd Quarterman - Chemist and Atom Man
Day 19 - Robert F. Flemming Jr. - Guitar Man
Day 20 - Charles S. L. Baker - The Friction Radiator Day 21 - Day 21 - Granville T. Woods - The Black Edison
Day 22 - Alfred L. Cralle - Next Time You Have Ice Cream...
Day 23 - Ellen Elgin - Through The Wringer
Day 24 - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams - Holding A Heart In the Palm of His Hands
Day 25 - Benjamin Bradley - Steam Engine Dominance
Day 26 - Elijah McCoy - The Real One
Day 27 - Alexander Miles - Hold The Door, Please!

Black Enough

You must be this color to go on this ride

Okay, so David, my husband and manager, got a call from an elderly lady.

"I'm looking for Donny Washington.  Is she there?"

 "Do you mean Donna Washington?"

 "I'm looking for the entertainer."

"Well, there's a Donna Washington and she's a storyteller."

"Yes.  That's who I mean."

She'd called in order to book me into some schools for February.

They discussed everything important in booking a show regarding the ages of the students, the dates and times, and the price for the sets.  Right before she hung up she said, and I quote:

"Just one last question.  Is she black?  I'm doing this for Black History Month, so she needs to be black."

My husband assured her that I was definitely black, and then they said their goodbyes.  He was very amused.

I often joke that when I started out in this business, February paid for the whole year.  I made as much money in February as I did the rest of the year because during Black History Month, even if people had never even considered hiring a performer, they suddenly needed a black one.

I had a friend who once said she didn't think it was fair.
"We have black history month.  We need a white history month!  We don't have a month when we are in demand!"

I always laughed that off, but what I could never bring myself to tell her was that every single month in America is white history month.  Most of the monuments, almost all of the street names, most of the city names, most of the landmarks in our country, most of the statues honoring brave people, most of our politicians, and the bulk of our textbooks are dedicated like a laser beam on the accomplishments and contributions of white Americans.  This should not be a surprise.  For much of the history of America, they were the only ones society as a whole was allowed to acknowledge when it came to great things.  Nobody else really mattered in this particular scheme.  It was a very particular story that was being told, and it wasn't very multicultural.

  I didn't learn about black people in history except for Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglas and George Washington Carver.  I didn't learn about any Asian Americans, Latin Americans, or many famous women in school either.  As far as I knew, there were only three black people, no Asian people, no people of Hispanic descent, three caucasian women ( Betsy Ross, Florence Nightingale, and Susan B. Anthony), and only one Native American woman who'd ever done anything noteworthy in American history.  (If you guessed that the Native American woman was Pocahontas, you guessed right!)  I grew up not knowing that our country was built on the back of a rainbow of people.  Nobody ever told me.  Well, actually, now that I think about it, I also learned about Sacagawea.

Pocahontas

These days things are different.  We are getting better about acknowledging our past...we still have problems with it and we are in no way comfortable with our history, but we are trying.

I'm glad we have African American History Month.  It kept me in rice and rent back when I was a new storyteller.

These days February doesn't play as prominent a role in the year as it once did, but I still make a small bank that month.

Is it still PC to say black?  I have no idea.  I'm not sure who is being offended by what at any moment and frankly, I don't have the energy to check most days.  Aren't we 'People of Color' now or some such thing?  Not sure that it matters, just thought I'd bring that up.

I supposed I could go on and on about how race is a human construct; we are all the same where it counts; and this nonsense about color and tribes has caused so much trouble between people who really ought to get along, but there is no point in rehashing philosophies about that here.  It can be read in many other places on the web with far more eloquence than I have at my disposal this evening.

Still, if we, as a country are forced to spend twenty eight days each year focusing on the contributions of African Americans, it doesn't seem like that is such a terrible thing.

Then again, perhaps my point of view on this whole subject doesn't really matter.   A casual observer might note that I am a tad bit on the biased side.  After all, I would definitely be considered - as my husband assured the lady booking the show - black.

Happy History!