The Importance of Black History Month

(suggested music pairing: Skin I'm In, Cameo)

This month is Black History Month. What does that mean to me? Why is it important? 

In my opinion, Black History Month exists in order to acknowledge, and bring to consciousness, all of the struggles that African Americans had to endure in American history; to highlight the measures taken by many individuals to help break that prevailing wisdom for the entire group; and to celebrate some of the accomplishments achieved in spite of those conditions.

I use the term African-American in this context, as I am focused on peoples of an African descent living within America. I am not normally as selective in my choice of terms, but in this case, I want to remain specific to this subset of peoples.

As a group of people, African Americans who lived during this period of oppression, which I define loosely as the 1600’s (when the first slave ships started sailing to what would become America), to the 1960s, are in a unique category. The definition of oppression in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power “. I’m going to add to that definition; where that exercise of power led to a denial of basic rights and freedoms under the fear or threat of injury or death.  

Many groups of people have been oppressed in history, and each group’s circumstances are different. Women’s oppression was for a longer period of time (well back in European history), but the threat of death in general wasn’t as pronounced. The height of Jewish oppression was for a much shorter period of time, but death was more than a threat. (I strongly recommend visiting the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC…it is a very intense experience.) However, in many cases you cannot necessarily look at a person and instantly tell they are Jewish. Other groups of people coming to America (Asian Americans and Latin Americans) were generally not brought here against their will, and did not have to endure slavery, but still had to ensure oppression.  The point of comparing is just for the sake of comparing and contrasting; to recognize that each group of oppressed people had their own circumstances and battles to overcome, and some similarities can be drawn with them all. The point is not to stack rank each group to determine which group comes out on top as “most oppressed.” The more we acknowledge, highlight, and celebrate the struggles humans have had to endure and overcome, and the more we move forward, the more we can ensure that we don’t need to keep adding to the list of groups.

I’m not going to get into any deep discussions of any specifics of Black History. When I look at Black History, here is my definition of Black History within the timeframe I specified above:   a group of people who were betrayed by their own kind, brought somewhere against their will, and forced to work in unhealthy conditions against their will. This all occurred in an environment where freedom was proclaimed and celebrated but denied for generations.  This all occurred in an environment where to crack under pressure was to be killed, or sent somewhere else, against their will, to some other place similar or worse. And this occurred for generations, without promise, without an end in sight. Grandparents and grandkids knew no different. Assuming the family unit was kept together, when more often than not, it wasn’t. And even as their government (not of their choice) proclaimed their freedom, their government didn’t put any practices in place for another several generations, so as they gained one freedom, another freedom was taken away. And all that was done based on outward appearance, and usually outward appearance alone.  

Take a second to try to imagine that.

And within that circumstance, within all of that, individuals fought overwhelming odds and great personal sacrifice to stand up and take lifelong journeys, unselfishlessly, to fight. The names that all get equated with Black History Month, the Rosa Parks, the Frederick Douglasses, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, Stokely Carmichael, and dozens of other recognizable names, and hundreds of relatively unknown names, all looked death in the eye and still said “Enough.” No Internet, no automobiles, no protection, no assurances – walking hundreds of miles, spending nights in jail, physically assaulted and attacked, spit on, shot at, and killed. 

THAT…THAT needs to be remembered. And learned from. And we all need these reminders. And in each oppressed group, there are examples of the same kinds of people, both in American History and World History.  Those are roads we do not need to travel down again.

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“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” - George Santayana (Spanish born American Philosopher, Poet, 1863-1952)

“Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.” - James Arthur Baldwin (American Essayist, Playwright and Novelist, 1924-1987)