LEARNING TOGETHER: The Story of America
Negro History Week (it would later evolve into Black History Month) was started by Carter G. Woodson, an historian, to honor Black leaders and important events. In the beginning, it was a celebration that occurred on the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Woodson was critical of how schools only taught that Black Americans were slaves and overlooked all the accomplishments that people of African descent had made in this country.
The first Negro History Week started in 1926, yet almost a hundred years later very little Black history is taught our schools. And some are trying to remove it completely. Why? What do they fear? That if you understood your history, you would know that Black people were in America before the Mayflower. Or that slaves survived the horrors of slavery only to be betrayed by our government during Reconstruction. Or that our government (again) legalized or turned its back on African Americans when Southern states used Jim Crow laws or the Black Codes to terrorize its citizens. That lynching in the South was considered family entertainment. That white mobs burnt down Black Wall Street (Tulsa) and many, many, many other predominately Black towns and no one has ever been held responsible. That just whistling at a white woman could get you killed.
Or is the fear that you would learn that Black inferiority is the other Big Lie along with the “Happy Slave Myth” or even worse that slavery was a choice. This last statement is proof alone that we need to teach Black history…to our own folks at the very least. Yeah, learning Black history can be painful, shocking, and unbelievable (for example in 1958 and 1959 some Southern schools shut down for the entire school year just to stop integration or that Ruby Bridges sat in a classroom all by herself for a whole school year because white parents didn’t want their children to seat next to a 6-year-old Black girl.) to hear.
But what also is missed when you don’t know Black History, are all the amazing things Black Americans accomplished, even during slavery. In 1828, Sojourner Truth went to court and fought for the freedom of her son. She won. This was unheard of at the time. If you don’t teach Black history, our kids will never know what an amazing woman Sojourner Truth was. She was an uneducated woman who became a national speaker. She fought for women’s rights. And we could use her heroism, wisdom, and leadership today.
Black cowboys, inventors, entrepreneurs, writers, doctors, great leaders, Supreme Court Justice (Thurgood Marshall and a future Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson) …all get lost when American history is not inclusive.
Black Americans are the creators of jazz and blues. Black Americans have fought in every American war, even when some soldiers were not allowed to have firearms. Cotton was king only because Black folks worked the hot fields pledged by boll weevils. Against all odds, Black Americans rose from the auction block to the White House within 150 years since their emancipation. We are not observers but participates in the making of America.
While there is a lot of pain in our story, there is a great deal of pride, courage, and determination. We are Americans. This is our home. And our history, our story deserves to be taught in American schools. Kids can handle the truth and still love this country. (I know a lot about Black history, and I don’t hate America).
Let’s just hope that it doesn’t take another hundred years before Black history is fully taught to our kids.
A child without a history is a child without a place to call home.
Woodson said, “If a race has no history it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”
OUR HISTORY MATTERS
#23
Carter G. Woodson
