[ This year the theme is Black Resistance. "African Americans have
resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the
racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings
since our arrival upon these shores." ]
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IT’S BLACK HISTORY MONTH. HERE ARE 3 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE
ANNUAL CELEBRATION  
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Scott Neuman
February 1, 2023
NPR
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_ This year the theme is Black Resistance. "African Americans have
resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the
racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings
since our arrival upon these shores." _

A march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 6, 2022 to
commemorate the 57th anniversary of Bloody Sunday., (AP Photo/Brynn
Anderson, File)

 

February marks Black History Month, a tradition that got its start in
the Jim Crow era and was officially recognized in 1976 as part of the
nation's bicentennial celebrations. It aims to honor the contributions
that African Americans have made and to recognize their sacrifices.

Here are three things to know about Black History Month:

It was Negro History Week before it was Black History Month

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson
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the scholar often referred to as the "father of Black
history," established Negro History Week to focus attention on Black
contributions to civilization. According to the NAACP, Woodson — at
the time only the second Black American after W.E.B. Du Bois to earn a
doctorate from Harvard University — "fervently believed that Black
people should be proud of their heritage and [that] all Americans
should understand the largely overlooked achievements of Black
Americans."

Woodson, the son of former enslaved people, famously said
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"If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it
becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands
in danger of being exterminated."

Woodson chose a week in February because of Abraham Lincoln, whose
birthday was Feb. 12, and Frederick Douglass, who was born enslaved
and did not know his actual birth date, but chose to celebrate it on
Feb. 14.

"Those two people were central to helping to afford Black people the
experience of freedom that they have now," says W. Marvin Dulaney,
president of the Association for the Study of African American Life
and History (ASALH [[link removed]]), which Woodson founded in
1915 and today is the official promoter of Black History Month.

In the decades after the Civil War and through the racial violence
that erupted across the country in the years following World War I
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there was a concerted effort to repress the teaching of Black
history.

"In the South, they tried to suppress Black history or African
American history in the public schools," Dulaney says, "particularly
about things like Reconstruction and slavery, literally distorting the
curriculum."

At the university level, Black studies programs were almost
nonexistent, he says. "California was the first state to actually
mandate Black history in 1951 for the public schools."

Largely as a result of the civil rights and Black consciousness
movements of the 1960s, "you saw an uptick in Black history courses,"
says LaGarrett King, an associate professor of social studies
education at the University at Buffalo.

Across the country, public schools "created all these courses and
mandates for Black history," unofficially creating a Black History
Month, King says.

The civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters on
Aug. 28, 1963, on the Mall in Washington, D.C., during the March on
Washington.  AFP via Getty Images

The Black press also helped push the idea, says Marcus Hunter, a
sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"_The Chicago Defender_, the _Philadelphia Tribune_, the _Baltimore
Afro-American_ ... they all started to say that this is something
we're celebrating," Hunter says.

By 1976, it became official, with President Gerald R. Ford declaring
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as Black History Month and calling on the public to "seize the
opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black
Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."

Today, Black History Month is also celebrated in Canada
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February and the United Kingdom
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October.

There's a new theme every year

Each year, the ASALH chooses a different theme for Black History
Month. This year, the theme is "Black Resistance."

"African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in
all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial
pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon these shores," the
ASALH says of this year's theme
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advocate for a dignified self-determined life in a just democratic
society in the United States and beyond the United States political
jurisdiction."

Dulaney says this year's theme was chosen, in part, because of the
current politically charged environment around race.

He calls efforts in states like Florida
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which recently rejected a new Advanced Placement course covering
African American studies, and Alabama
[[link removed](AP)%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Alabama%20State,about%20race%20in%20the%20classroom.],
where the State Board of Education has voted to limit how educators
can talk about race in the classroom, "a strong retrenchment" against
coming to terms with Black history. In light of that, the theme seemed
appropriate this year, Dulaney says.

King acknowledges that some people might interpret this year's theme
as politically provocative, but it shouldn't be seen that way. Rather,
it's an effort to reframe the conversation about Black history around
a theme of empowerment, he says.

"With resistance there is an implied understanding of oppression, and
it seems to be a segment of the population who do not want to admit
those historical facts," he says. "Yet, resistance helps us understand
the power that Black people have in terms of their historical
realities, which counters the concept of victimhood that many say
drives Black History education."

Recent controversies over how race is taught echo a time when Black
history was often ignored

For Dulaney, the culture wars playing out across the country over how
students learn about race feel like a case of history repeating
itself.

For many, recent events — the police killings of Breonna Taylor
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George Floyd, for example, and the ongoing controversy surrounding
critical race theory, an academic framework stating that people who
are white have benefited from ingrained racism in American
institutions — look like a recurring pattern, he says.

"I grew up in Ohio and we didn't learn about a single African or
African American man or woman who had ever done anything in history,"
the 72-year-old Dulaney says.

"Starting in the '60s, through the '70s, we were very successful in
integrating African American history of culture into the curriculum,"
he says.

However, "now here we are back, having to push that agenda again ...
[against those] trying to suppress the teaching of African American
history and culture."

King thinks the current controversy surrounding critical race theory
will die down. "My personal feelings are that they'll find another
politically manufactured outrage and move on to the next thing," he
says.

UCLA's Hunter thinks that debate is indicative of where the country is
right now. What it really says is "there's a lot of work to still be
done."

However, Black History Month has been and can continue to be a force
for better understanding.

"It offers a certain amount of optimism about what is possible if
people actually focus on the educational importance of it," he says.

_Scott Neuman is a reporter and editor, working mainly on breaking
news for NPR's digital and radio platforms._

* Black History Month
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* civil rights movement
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