Asking Questions about Black History Month

February 2, 2020. This post is feeling outdated to me these days. I DO think we need to do more to acknowledge Black History Month these days. However, I still wrestle with what that looks like. I will continue to wrestle as I consider an update to this post. In the meantime, please read a post I wrote this past September for Middleweb about why we need to teach Black history all year long. And read this eloquent essay by Lonnie Bunch, the former head of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and now the Secretary of the Smithsonian. If you read that, then I don't think I need to update this post. He says it far better than I ever could.

the original post:

Every February 1st, I explained to students why we would not be doing anything "special" for Black History Month. And while I am comfortable with that decision, I have always thought it was important to explain to my students why I made that decision.

Quite a few years have past since I first did that, and the passage of time has only served to further convince me that this is good choice.

Let me be clear: I do NOT believe that having a black president means everything is okay for African Americans or with race relations in the United States. I do not believe we are in a "post-racial" era. (See resources below). But I do think we are in an era when the concept of Black History Month raises more questions than it solves problems. So at the beginning of February, I prefer to raise questions.

For those of us who teach U.S. history, isolating our study of African American history to February doesn't work well on a practical level or conceptually. We simply cannot tell or analyze the story of the United States without Black History. Our school year starts in August; we cannot wait for February.

This 2009 article, "With a black president in the White House, some wonder if Black History Month is still necessary" echoes what I used to tell students. It also explains how the month came to be, which is also worth sharing with students. (You can read more on that here). Interestingly, the founder of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson himself hoped that one day Black History Month (in his day it was Negro History Week) would no longer be necessary. The article also touches on an issue which has come to concern me a lot in the last few years: the possibility that poor history teaching and reading the about the same few African American heroes every year and reading only King's, "I Have a Dream Speech" as a way to learn about Civil Rights will trivialize and simplify a history that is far more complex.

I would also recommend a much older article (which I have given to students to read) written by an African American school principal, Wayne Joseph, "Why I Dread Black History Month."  Published in Newsweek, the link attributes the article to "Newsweek staff," but it was originally published in the "My Turn" section. It makes a convincing argument against separating out Black history from American history.

So what about the idea of spending a few minutes each day or week focusing on one African American figure in history? I'm not so keen on that either. Again, from a practical sense, it doesn't really work (we've only got 40-50 minutes!). But I also fear it leads to the sort of activities that involve students making superficial posters about black heroes that may or may not have a relevant connection to American history and trivializing the very real accomplishments of individual African Americans on the one hand, and African American history in general on the other.

And are we going to do this all year long for all the other groups of Americans and for all the other months...?

Month		Heritage Celebrated
January		None to date
February		African American History Month
March		National Women's History Month
April		None to date
May		Asian Pacific American Heritage, Older Americans Month and Jewish American Heritage Month
June		Gay Lesbian Pride Month
July		None to date
August		None to date
September		National Hispanic-Latino Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15)
October		National Disability Employment Awareness Month and National Italian American Heritage Month
November		National American Indian Heritage Month
December		None to date; are two international commemorations

link for above chart and info about each month (Check out the website it came from: DiversityCentral.com)

I will devote my next post to African Americans during the Progressive Era. (I note with bemusement that I often taught this topic by fluke of the calendar during the first day or two of February).

A few articles and other resources about the debate over whether or not the United States is now "post-racial."

• Bill Moyers interview with Angela Glover Blackwell - Blackwell is a social justice advocate who works for PolicyLink, a national research and action institute. The link is a brief clip, but also has a link to a longer interview and the transcript. (March 2014)
• Sean McElwee, "Five Signs We're Not a 'Post-Racial' Society" in the Huffington Post (August 2014)
• The New York Times, "The Fight for Civil Rights Long After Selma" (January 2015)
• National Public Radio "The 'Post-Racial' Conversation, One Year In (January 2010 - dated, but interesting)