DUKES
FANS:
“Someone will have to tell my story; I guess
it will have to be me.” poet Langston Hughes
I
have been a history freak since, well, since forever. I can recall being a
young child, looking through the World Book Encyclopedias that my mother sold,
and being fascinated by people, times and events that had happened a long time
ago. In elementary school I was likewise fascinated by what had happened years
ago and by famous historical people. I memorized a lot of names and dates, was
captured and intrigued by time lines, and fell in love with the 300 and 900
stacks in the Free Library-the stacks that by Dewey’s system contained most of
the historical material. I knew that if I was interested in subject “A” and the
book I was looking for wasn’t in, I could look to the right or to the left of
where that book should be and there would be something as interesting as what I
had been looking for originally. All this fed my insatiable curiosity, made me
hungry for knowledge, and turned me into someone who looked for connections
between ideas, times and people. That interest continues to this very day.
Whenever we travel somewhere new and are walking around my wife can often be
heard to say, “You never met an historical marker you didn’t love!” It is no surprise
that for some 40 years I taught history and English in middle and high school.
The ideas
about history that I encountered in my official education were initially
cursory and spotty. We were taught the names of famous people, largely white, and
we looked at events through the lens of great accomplishments; things that made
the United States great. But from all the reading I was doing before I even
started school, I knew I wanted more. The Philadelphia Free Library was a place
where I could satisfy part of that desire. I grew up during the 1950’s and
1960’s, and there was an explosion of new ways of looking at history happening
then. New sources were being found and explored. New interpretations of time
periods and events abounded. New theories about history were being put forth,
and different people’s stories were now being included. The library was an
important gateway to all of that for me; I was able to find out things I had
little knowledge about due to the wealth of information in those stacks. What I
found in one book led me to still others. The more I found, the more I wanted
to find out. For an insatiably curious kid, it was an information
smorgasbord.
We also had
the wonders of Negro History Week when I was growing up-a week during which
special emphasis was given to studying the stories and history of Negro people,
as we were then called. My church and my school provided some books, told us
some stories, and put on some plays that got me exposed and interested in the
lives of men and women who were generally not in the school's history books.
Negro History Week was an endless source of discoveries; it was a joy to
uncover so much that had been missing or hidden. The joy of that
"uncovering" has stayed with me. I still love finding out “new”
information and new ways of looking at the past.
Part of the
beauty and power of that week for me was that it had been started by us-we were
starting to tell our own stories publicly and officially. Negro History Week
was started by a Black historian in the mid-1920’s. Carter G. Woodson, the son
of slaves, had received a doctorate from Harvard in 1912, and he realized that
in most history books Blacks were either depicted in stereotypical and
inaccurate ways or not mentioned at all. To counter this he founded the
Association for the Study of Negro Life in 1915, and he started publishing The
Journal of Negro History, a publication that featured historical research
about Blacks and their lives. The Journal published research articles by and
about Blacks and was distributed to schools and people who educated Blacks.
Interest in the publication and topic soared, and it became a central
repository for historical research about Blacks. In 1926 the Association
established Negro History Week, a time for black churches, students,
communities, colleges, and more to focus on the history of Blacks in this
country and the world. He set it in the second week of February because that
was between the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12th) and Frederick Douglass
(believed to be February 18th). For decades it was something that Blacks
observed on their own with essay contests, plays, research projects, special
sermons, articles in the Black press, and more. Eventually some cities began to
issue proclamations recognizing the celebration, and it came more into public
view. The Civil Rights Movement and the rise of Black Power in the 1960’s and
1970’s gave it a new emphasis, and it became more of a regular part in many
school curricula, especially Black colleges. By then it had been renamed and
had expanded to Black History Month, and it was much more visible. President
Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976 to coordinate
with the bi-centennial of the country. It has been officially recognized by
most schools and communities since then. Newspapers, TV networks, and radio
stations do special programming, and cities host special breakfasts, award
ceremonies, essay contests, and more. It is pretty much in the mainstream now.
To me one of the
things this month can do is allow us to pause, slow down and take a
deeper look at a lot of our assumptions and collective knowledge about who we
are as a country. Yes, we have many renditions of the, "I Have a
Dream" speech,and we talk often in generalities about different parts of
the African-American experience. But if the month can be seen as an opportunity
to expand our knowledge and better understand where we as an entire culture
have been, the month can give us ways to deepen our understandings about this
place and ways the past influences the present. We know some things about
slavery, for example, but for most of us slavery was something that happened on
plantations and in the South-it was about picking things and working in the
fields and the “Big House.” The reality is far more complicated than that;
there was slavery in each and every colony before the American Revolution and
in each and every state after the Revolution. And all the activities and
structures needed and developed to support slavery were at the very heart of US
economic growth throughout the 18th and 19th
century-shipping, banking, the stock market, trade, and more. Slavery fueled much of the growth of the country. The New York
Historical Society had a monumental exhibit in 2005 and 2006 on Slavery in New
York City, and the history it revealed blew people's minds and totally changed many people’s ideas
about what the 19th century was about and the role of the Big Apple
during that time. People had not realized that New York had been a slave state
and that its role in banking, shipping, and trade made it the actual center of the
entire United States slave system. No NYC at that time, little or no slavery in the country.(http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/
) Likewise, there was a website developed in 2003 by historian Douglas Harper
called, “Slavery in the North” that examines how each colony and state north of
the Mason-Dixon line carried out their involvement with the “peculiar
institution.” (http://slavenorth.com/index.html) Looking at these sites and other books, films, etc. deepened my knowledge and
unearthed moving and amazing stories about which I had known little. And it
can do that for all of us. That is one of the wonderful things about
history-there is usually so much more beneath the surface of any one thing than
we see at first glance. There is always much to be uncovered and brought forth,
but we must be willing to look, see and to dig. I love that digging.
I hope this
Black History Month finds you looking in new places for new things and
discovering and uncovering new facts and new people. There is a universe of
largely unknown, people whose lives have amazing stories to tell and whose
accomplishments are astonishing. If I may jump start that for you, let me toss
out some names with whom you may not be familiar: Benjamin Banneker, Bass
Reaves, Miriam Benjamin, Daniel Hale Williams, and Valerie Thomas. If you are
curious, look them up and see who they were and what they did, and how they are
connected to so many things we take for granted. Dig, uncover, and enjoy!
