BLACK HISTORY NOTES

The celebration of black history is both a necessary corrective to the exclusion and misrepresentation of blacks in American history and an affirmation of black life passed on from one generation to the next.  Contrary to the timeline of many 19^th and early 20^th century textbooks, black history is much more than a shallow overview of the conditions of slavery and the emancipation of enslaved Africans in the Americas.  Yet African and African American contributions to history have often been denied, ignored, devalued, or purposefully hidden and attributed to Europeans and Euro Americans.  The need to reverse historical mis-education and set the record straight on the historical, cultural, scientific, political and social achievement of ethnic African and African American peoples has been a main thrust behind the celebration of black history.

Prior to the first recorded arrival of twenty involuntary African laborers to the North American British settler colony of Jamestown, Virginia on August 20, 1619, our black ancestors participated in civilizations on the continent of Africa, such as the Yoruba, Akan, Bakongo, Benin, Wolof, Mandinka, Mende, Dogon, Dahomey, and the Mali Empire, that were sophisticated cultures with extensive histories, creative arts, politics, religions, social hierarchies, and ethnic groupings.  There is historical evidence that Africans had traveled to the Americas several times prior to the European Enlightenment and the establishment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  With the onset of the financially profitable trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery soon became legalized in the British colonies of North America.  Through forced migration, the Middle Passage, and the African Diaspora, the ancestors of African American survived extreme hardship to become a vital part of the landscape transformation and the creation of society and cultures of the Americas.

In the 20^th century, a leading figure in the celebration of black history is Carter G. Woodson.  Trained as a historian and earning his doctorate from Harvard University in 1912, Woodson went on to teach at Howard University and become a co-founder, along with Jesse E. Moreland, of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.  Woodson believed that the history of African Americans was also American history and that the inclusion of truthful scientific facts concerning black achievements would work to change race relations for the better.  In 1926, Negro History Week was established, and Woodson’s efforts to popularize the recognition and study of African American contributions to the Americas and to world history paid off.  Fifty years later, in 1976, the celebration of black history would expand to encompass the entire month of February.  Although Woodson and W.E.B. Dubois are prominent persons in the emergence of black historiography and the study of black life, there many other women and men whose work and tenacity contributed to the success of black history as an academic field of study and the public popularity of black history celebrations.  Arthur A. Schomburg, Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Letitia Woods Brown, John Hope Franklin, Lorraine A. Williams, Lorenzo Greene, John Henrik Clarke and many other persons and organizations have also made valuable contributions to the celebration and study of black history.

Monica R. Miller, Ph.D. Candidate, Chicago Theological Seminary

2010 Black History Celebration, The African American Lectionary

2-19-2012