The Roots of Black History Month
The Roots of Black History Month
As It Celebrates It’s 100th year
By Wes Hessel & Catherine Rees-Hessel
Black History Is More Than A Month, But It Started As A Week…
Black History Month is recognition and commemoration of the contributions of African-Americans to the history of this country. This celebration started when a group of men – Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, George Cleveland Hall, William D. Hartgrove, Jesse E. Moorland, Alexander L. Jackson, and James E. Stamps – founded the ASNLH (Association for the Study of Negro Life and History) in September of 1915. Just over ten years later, Dr. Woodson created the forerunner of the current celebration – Negro History Week – in February of 1926; he chose a week in which the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were celebrated.
Gained Momentum And Spread…
Black History Week became Black History Month with a proposal from the leadership of the Black United Students at Kent State University in February of 1969 – one year later, Kent State celebrated the first Black History Month. In 1976, President Gerald Ford, as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration, urged the American people to “seize the opportunity to honor the too often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” In 1987, the United Kingdom celebrated its first Black History Month in London, and Canada followed suit in 1995, by officially recognizing February as Black History Month, to honor black Canadians.
Learned Man Who Raised Awareness
Dr. Woodson was himself the son of a slave and although he did not begin his high school education until the age of 20, delayed by his need to earn a living in West Virginia coal mines, he went on to study at Berea College, the Sorbonne, and the University of Chicago. Woodson eventually earned his PhD at Harvard. At that point, he was only the second African American to achieve this advanced degree, his predecessor being none other than the imminent and renowned, W. E. B. Du Bois.
Back Before You Knew It
The first documented person of African descent to come to what became the United States was a member of Ponce de León’s legendary expedition in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth. In 1513, Juan Garrido, a Spanish-African conquistador is the first known free African to have arrived in the new world. But Garrido was the exception, within 50 years slavery was well established, with the Spanish bringing slaves to St. Augustine (now Florida), as early as the town’s founding in 1565. The city is considered the oldest European-founded continuously-inhabited settlement in what is now the mainland 48 states.
Nothing New
Various peoples of Africa were brought to the “New World” as slaves, bought, sold, and treated like the property they were considered to be, not the persons of rich culture and tradition they had been. The “first” African slaves brought to what is now the United States is typically thought to be a load of captives from what is now Angola, sold to Jamestown Governor George Yeardley and Abraham Piersey, the colony’s trade minister, for food, near the end of August 1619.
Color Inside The Lines
The mistreatment of people of color in our nation is certainly nothing new – there is a long history of subjugation and abuse. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, suppression and subversion of human rights, Jim Crow and separate but equal became the “law” throughout the south where white hooded riders lynched and murdered blacks who didn’t tow the line. Yet African-Americans time and again have proved to be instrumental in our history and innovation.
“I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness that surrounds me,” 
