Hi Friend,

It's officially February and that means it's Black History Month — a time to learn about, uplift and celebrate Black history, culture and life! While this month always prompts me to engage extra hard with Black History, the most meaningful change starts when we stop seeing Black history as an elective and start treating it as a daily practice — an ongoing commitment to unlearn and relearn. 

One way you can start creating your own practice is by digging deeper into the political roots of Black History Month. February is so much more than search engines adding icons of well-known Black figures to their home pages; it challenges us to rethink knowledge itself. 

Who decides what qualifies as knowledge? What's at stake when the alternative knowledge forms that underlie marginalized histories are erased, suppressed and intentionally distorted? This is a tension that Black History Month was designed to resolve.

What we know today as Black History Month began as Negro History and Literature Week in April 1921, launched by the "Father of Black History Month," Carter G. Woodson. Under Woodson’s leadership, his organization the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) expanded the initiative, rebranding it as Negro History Week in 1926. Decades later, during the Civil Rights Movement, advocacy efforts pushed for a longer recognition period, leading to the official establishment of Black History Month in 1976.

Woodson, born in 1875 to formerly enslaved parents, spent much of his life eagerly learning Black history and combating its erasure. After working as a teacher for thirty years and earning a PhD in History from Harvard University, Woodson realized that the erasure of Black history from schools was a part of a larger political project to maintain white dominance. 

He argued that the deliberate exclusion of Black contributions from mainstream education—what he termed “Black curricular violence”—was not just an oversight but a tool of racial violence. Ultimately for Woodson, it was the denial of Black historical achievements, philosophical provocations and cultural vibrancy that fueled physical assaults on Black life.

Reflecting on the consequences of Black erasure from school curriculum in his 1933 publication, The Mis-Education of the Negro, Woodson wrote:

“The Negro knows practically nothing of his history and his ‘friends’ are not permitting him to learn it… [And] if a race has no history, if it has no worth-while tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of extermination.”

As we move through Black History Month, we must resist the temptation to focus on Black "firsts" in education, popular culture, or the world of invention and entrepreneurship. Black History Month is about who has the right to tell the story and how the narratives that are popularized shape power.

Need a reminder that this is your month and your history is worthy of the spotlight? Check out URGE’s Black History Month Bill of Rights on Instagram. Let’s celebrate and protect our history—because when we tell our stories, we can correct the historical record and build thriving Black futures. 

URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity
1012 14th Street NW, Suite 305
Washington, DC xxxxxx
United States

You are receiving this email because you signed up to be part of the young people’s movement for reproductive justice centering the leadership of young people of color who are women, queer, trans, nonbinary, and people of low-income. If you no longer want to receive emails from URGE, please unsubscribe.