Every February, the U.S. honors the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans who have helped shape our nation. Black History Month celebrates the rich cultural heritage, triumphs, and adversities that are an indelible part of our country’s history.
This year’s theme, Black Health and Wellness, pays homage to medical scholars and health care providers. This topic is especially timely as we move into the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected minority communities.
The celebration of Black History Month owes its origins to the historian Carter G. Woodson, who was born in 1875 in New Canton, Virginia to parents who had been enslaved.
He did not start high school until age 20 but went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at Berea College in Kentucky and a doctorate in history from Harvard University. While growing up, Woodson was scarred by his experiences with racism, and when he got older, he put his formidable intelligence to good use, confronting the lies and historical distortions upon which segregation and racism were based.
Woodson realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. Along with William D. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson, and James E. Stamps, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) on September 9, 1915, in Chicago, Illinois.
Today, the association is based in Washington, D.C. ASNLH was renamed the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History (ASALH) in 1973.
In 1926 he created “Negro History Week” to help promote this cause. He chose February in homage to the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and to Abraham Lincoln, both of whom were born in that month.
Dr. Woodson lectured often in West Virginia, and citizens in that state began celebrating what they called Negro History Month in the 1940s. Dr. Woodson died in 1950, and in 1969, growing political consciousness among Black college students led to students and educators at Kent State University proposing the first Black History Month in February 1969.
And drawing on the importance of the American Bicentennial, President Gerald Ford issued a statement on the importance of Black History Month to all Americans in February 1976.
Ford called upon Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history,” History.com reports.
Forty years after President Ford formally recognized Black History Month, Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, delivered a message of his own from the White House, a place built by slaves.
“Black History Month shouldn’t be treated as though it is somehow separate from our collective American history or somehow just boiled down to a compilation of greatest hits from the March on Washington or from some of our sports heroes,” Obama said.
“It’s about the lived, shared experience of all African Americans, high and low, famous and obscure, and how those experiences have shaped and challenged and ultimately strengthened America,” he continued.
Many people don’t realize this, But Canada also commemorates Black History Month in February, while the U.K. and Ireland celebrate it in October, according to PBS.org.
