Does ‘Black History Month’ Adequately Honor Our African American Ancestry and Heritage?
On a recent episode of The Conversation with Al McFarlane, a regular expert guest lamented that over his lifetime he has been identified in various legal documents as Colored, Negro, Black, and African American. As we approach ‘Black History Month’ 2023 is it time to reconsider how we as a people define ourselves? In the case of our former celebration of racial pride, prior to Black History Month, we honored our ethnicity during Negro History Week, instituted by Harvard-educated historian, Carter G. Woodson in 1926, when his move was a very bold political statement. For half a century, until 1976, ‘Negro’ History Week as an observance of pride became passé. Starting in the late 1960’s, bolstered by the James Brown song, ‘Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” Black History Month replaced the former one-week designation, observed the second week of February which coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. As we approach another 50 years, 2026, of celebrating our ancestral heritage as Black History, is it time to update the definition again of who we are as a people? I first broached this idea as a college freshman in the late 1970’s, soon after Black [...]
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On a recent episode of The Conversation with Al McFarlane, a regular expert guest lamented that over his lifetime he has been identified in various legal documents as Colored, Negro, Black, and African American. As we approach ‘Black History Month’ 2023 is it time to reconsider how we as a people define ourselves? In the case of our former celebration of racial pride, prior to Black History Month, we honored our ethnicity during Negro History Week, instituted by Harvard-educated historian, Carter G. Woodson in 1926, when his move was a very bold political statement. For half a century, until 1976, ‘Negro’ History Week as an observance of pride became passé. Starting in the late 1960’s, bolstered by the James Brown song, ‘Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” Black History Month replaced the former one-week designation, observed the second week of February which coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. As we approach another 50 years, 2026, of celebrating our ancestral heritage as Black History, is it time to update the definition again of who we are as a people? I first broached this idea as a college freshman in the late 1970’s, soon after Black [...]
