You're Doing Black History Month Wrong
And here's how to get it right.
As a historian of race, I find Black History Month to be the most wonderful time of the year.
The whole country turns its attention toward Black history-makers and their stories. We plan events, talk about books and remind ourselves that Black history is indeed American history.
But there is an issue with how most of us commemorate Black History Month.
We tend to view Black history as isolated points on a timeline instead of a coherent and continuous story.
When we look at Black history as a set of separate facts without their proper context, we can miss the significance — and the beauty — of it.
This troubling lack of context is also why so many people think history is boring. If it’s just memorizing names and dates devoid of the compelling stories that surround them, then why should anyone care?
This article comes from my latest contribution at CNN Opinion. To continue reading click HERE.
How are you commemorating Black History Month or what questions do you have about how to do it? Share in the comments!
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One thing I have learned recently is that the value of the wool which is often seen as the "cash crop" which seeded the Industrial Revolution in England after 1850 could only have been created by more acres of grazing land than exist in all of England. Where then, is the source of this huge required investment? In fact it was in large part from the sugar plantations of Barbados where enslaved Africans had been subjected to inhuman toil and severe early mortality for fabulous material gain at the hands of their British taskmasters for two and a half centuries beginning in 1600. It is only by meticulous study of the history of West Africa beginning before the time of Columbus that one can understand how the Industrial Revolution, indeed, how our modern life with the convenience and health we so take for granted, ever came about in the first place. Virtually everything we have came from slavery. Yes, Black History is continuous, complex, and virtually completely unknown to almost every American in 2024.