DUKES FANS:
“Someone will have to tell my story; I guess it will have to be me.” poet Langston Hughes
“We should not emphasize “Negro History,” but “The Negro IN history.” Carter Woodson, historian
“The incredible thing about history is that there is always more to discover; it is never” finished.” Anonymous
“Black History is not just about the oppression and roadblocks Black Americans have faced” Tim Andrews, attorney
As readers of these missives know I am a history freak; a history freak who loves to ask questions, look for new ideas and connections, find out why and how something happened, how something works, what that word originally meant, and more. If you have been reading these missives for a while I have written about the origins of our current calendar, the construction of bridges, things found in downtowns, and multiple events, issues, developments, people, processes, and many other things connected to world and American history. History is an endless and ever-deep well from which we can draw inspiration, amazement, fear, horror, revulsion, joy, commitment, connection, delight, sorrow, pain, and so much more. Keeping, creating, and telling histories is, to me, one of the most purely human things we do.
I
am saying all of this because February is the start of Black History
Month, and at the same time the country finds itself fighting over the
stories it wants to tell or hear, learn from, not listen to, think
about, not think about, silence or let breathe free. One of the things
civilizations have done since the beginning of civilization some 5,000
years ago is to have the powers-that-be trying to control, encourage,
limit, expand and/or erase certain ideas and stories it tells itself.
All civilizations-ALL civilizations-have been faced with this same
question and tension at different times. That is why civilizations have
either pushed for universal education or limited it; opened libraries
and museums or burned them, or
tried to control what could be in them. It has been said that, “He who
wins the war writes the history books,” and that is true to a large
extent. And a version of that old tension is playing out right in front
of us all over this and other countries. Because
of that, I decided to look back at a couple of missives I wrote in
recent years during Black History Month, combine and change them a bit. I
think this may be fitting to the time in which we are living.
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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 and that more was there. The Philadelphia Free Library was a place where I could satisfy part of that quest for knowledge. 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 public and school libraries were important gateways 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, and the more I found, the more I wanted to find out. For an insatiably curious kid, libraries were 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. That joy of that "uncovering" has stayed with me. I still love finding out “new” information and new ways of looking at the past, present, and future.
Carter Woodson helped found Negro History Week in 1926. The son of former slaves, he had graduated from Berea College in KY in 1903, earned a Master’s Degree in History from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, becoming the second African American to do so.( W.E.B. DuBois was the first, but Woodson is the only offspring of former slaves to receive a PhD in history from an American institution). The celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1915 brought thousands of people to the Chicago Coliseum to see exhibits and displays on Black life. Out of that, Woodson got Black schools, churches, organizations, and newspapers to include ways of getting information about Black history to Black people and others interested in this. He founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 and their publication, The Journal of Negro History, They supported and encouraged research into the history, culture and accomplishments of Negroes, as we were then called. He was particularly interested in educating young Blacks about their history. "If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated," Woodson wrote in "The Mis-Education of the Negro." He sponsored research, worked with other historians, conducted interviews with hundreds of Blacks about their personal and family histories, and more.
Negro History Week caught on, went across the country, and eventually
moved into the regular school curriculum of more and more public
elementary schools. When I was in elementary school in the 1950’s we had
Negro History Week observances at Dunlap Elementary School. Of course,
these observances had become mostly about famous Black people who had
accomplished things, and not Woodson’s desired look at the Negro IN
history. But while I overdosed on George Washington Carver and Phillis
Wheatley in school, I had Ebony and Jet magazines and the Philadelphia Tribune
newspaper at home. These were Black owned and Black themed
publications, that had listened to Woodson and provided that wider view.
And I had open public libraries that were sources of more and more
information.
Things have changed over the decades. The organization Woodson founded is now called The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), we are now not called, “Negroes,” and there is now a Federally recognized “Black History Month” instead of just a week. There have been much more scholastic and scientific published research, many more books and films, many more newspaper and magazine, articles and much more. There are numerous Black-life centered museums and official Black Heritage sites across the country, including museums looking at Black WWII fighter pilots, Black firefighters, cowboys and pioneers, a Great Blacks in Wax Museum, and much, much, more. There are also webpages turning up interesting and previously hidden or unknown aspects of how Blacks have been a part of this culture.
This is particularly relevant now in the wake of all that happened in 2020. One of the effects of the outrage over George Floyd is that it became clear that there is a lot Americans do not know, see, or recognize about Black life. There has been a more conscious effort to change that and that is good. And that has also been met with intense resistance-banning books, firing teachers, legislatures taking control of curricula, and more. As mentioned earlier, one of the things studying history can sometimes lead to is fear, and that is playing out in school board meetings, legislatures, elections, and websites all across the country. I have looked at a lot of ways civilizations throughout history have handled the question of what stories are “OK,” and it seems to me that when folks are taking radical actions to limit knowledge and stories, they are afraid of something. As a life-long learner and a teacher for 40 years, that deeply saddens me.
I invite each of you to spend some time doing some investigation of places, web sites, museum sites, and more to look for and see some stories with which you may be unfamiliar; to see what you can find out about aspects of Black life with which you are/were unfamiliar or unaware. I invite us all to make this a month more in line with Woodson’s goal of discovering, Blacks IN history-exploring, and looking at who we as Americans are in as broad a sense as possible. There are plenty of places to uncover these things, both within the Philadelphia region and nationwide. Surprises and new learning await, sometimes painful, sometimes wonderful and amazing, and sometimes simply fun. Let’s make this Black History Month a month of wonder and discovery. Thanks.
Websites:
The Philadelphia Tribune Newspaper: https://www.phillytrib.com
Philadelphia African-American Museum https://www.aampmuseum.org
The National Museum of African-American History: https://nmaahc.si.edu
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History: https://asalh.org/
The African-American Firefighter Museum www.aaffmuseum.org
List of African-American Centered Museums Nationwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_focused_on_African_Americans
Black in Walden: Black Walden Came First. Thoreau, After.
The Legacy Museum: https://museumandmemorial.eji.org
Black Inventors Museum: Black Inventors Matter
(And if you know of other sites, sources, etc. please forward them to me.)
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