We’ve all heard of the Civil Rights Movement at one point or another during our academic careers. We’ve all been exposed to the nonviolent tactics stressed by Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the “By any means necessary” approach used by Malcolm X. We’ve heard of the Black Panthers and their separatist beliefs. However, either consciously or not, we only tend to affiliate Black History Month with the aforementioned leaders and occasionally with the Panthers. We don’t normally acknowledge the Harlem Renaissance, or the works of W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington, among many other important things. Black History Month is about Black history – all African-American history that this nation has witnessed, willingly or not.
Now don’t get me wrong: what MLK Jr. and his recently deceased wife, Coretta Scott King, did for our entire nation will never be forgotten. Their impact on our society is unable to be forgotten. But other nonviolence advocates like John Lewis, Diane Nash, and James Bevel – all founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which took up campaigns like the Freedom Rides and sit-ins across the nation – and members of the Congress of Racial Equality are often thrown into the shadows of these looming historical figures. If you want to celebrate the Civil Rights Movement as a part of BHM, celebrate people like Fred Shuttlesworth, who led the march in Birmingham after those four little girls died, and A. Philip Randolph, the organizer of the Million Man March and the March on Washington, rather than the same handful of clichéd leaders – learn something new, learn something about the thousands of other faceless, nameless people who made the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act possible.
And Black history does not simply consist of what happened in the 1960s; rather, there is a wealth of literature, music, art, dance, and theatre that dates back to the 1600s which has remained largely unrecognized by the general American public. The Harlem Renaissance is among the most influential American literary movements – but we only hear about Langston Hughes and occasionally Zora Neal Hurston; why are we not taught the works of Richard Wright or Dorothy West? People of our generation tend to forget that jazz originated in Black America, with artists like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker; we tend to forget, or sometimes don’t even know, that our parents’ beloved rock ‘n’ roll came from the musical genius of John Coltrane, Bo Diddley, and Nina Simone. Black art and its movements have also had an incredible yet overlooked influence on American art – how many of us can name even three Black artists? While we learn about Jackson Pollack and Edward Hopper, why do the names Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence never reach our ears? How many of us know that the Charleston, the Jitterbug, and the Twist have roots in the same Black America that produced tap and break dancing? Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is one of the most important landmarks in not only Black theatre, but general American theatre as well – but this play couldn’t have been written without something to build upon. Where are the acknowledgements of the other Black productions that helped create this – where are the mentions of Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind and William Blackwell Branch’s In Splendid Error?
Black History Month was created to teach Americans – black, white, red, brown, orange – about a group of people whose historical importance has been either overlooked or simply ignored until recently. Rather than making the most of this opportunity, however, each of us, myself included, has allowed ourselves to take a backseat in what was meant to be a learning process. We’re not questioning why we only hear about the same five or six people every year; we’re not questioning why Black History Month has somehow morphed into Civil Rights Month (not that this movement was not important – but it was not the only thing that ever happened in the history of Black America); we’re letting ourselves be content with what little knowledge is provided by our biased and outdated textbooks, by the uninterested media, by random, too-short presentations made only during this month. This year, we should try to use this month as it was intended to be used: let’s try to learn about Black History.
Now don’t get me wrong: what MLK Jr. and his recently deceased wife, Coretta Scott King, did for our entire nation will never be forgotten. Their impact on our society is unable to be forgotten. But other nonviolence advocates like John Lewis, Diane Nash, and James Bevel – all founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which took up campaigns like the Freedom Rides and sit-ins across the nation – and members of the Congress of Racial Equality are often thrown into the shadows of these looming historical figures. If you want to celebrate the Civil Rights Movement as a part of BHM, celebrate people like Fred Shuttlesworth, who led the march in Birmingham after those four little girls died, and A. Philip Randolph, the organizer of the Million Man March and the March on Washington, rather than the same handful of clichéd leaders – learn something new, learn something about the thousands of other faceless, nameless people who made the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act possible.
And Black history does not simply consist of what happened in the 1960s; rather, there is a wealth of literature, music, art, dance, and theatre that dates back to the 1600s which has remained largely unrecognized by the general American public. The Harlem Renaissance is among the most influential American literary movements – but we only hear about Langston Hughes and occasionally Zora Neal Hurston; why are we not taught the works of Richard Wright or Dorothy West? People of our generation tend to forget that jazz originated in Black America, with artists like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker; we tend to forget, or sometimes don’t even know, that our parents’ beloved rock ‘n’ roll came from the musical genius of John Coltrane, Bo Diddley, and Nina Simone. Black art and its movements have also had an incredible yet overlooked influence on American art – how many of us can name even three Black artists? While we learn about Jackson Pollack and Edward Hopper, why do the names Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence never reach our ears? How many of us know that the Charleston, the Jitterbug, and the Twist have roots in the same Black America that produced tap and break dancing? Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is one of the most important landmarks in not only Black theatre, but general American theatre as well – but this play couldn’t have been written without something to build upon. Where are the acknowledgements of the other Black productions that helped create this – where are the mentions of Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind and William Blackwell Branch’s In Splendid Error?
Black History Month was created to teach Americans – black, white, red, brown, orange – about a group of people whose historical importance has been either overlooked or simply ignored until recently. Rather than making the most of this opportunity, however, each of us, myself included, has allowed ourselves to take a backseat in what was meant to be a learning process. We’re not questioning why we only hear about the same five or six people every year; we’re not questioning why Black History Month has somehow morphed into Civil Rights Month (not that this movement was not important – but it was not the only thing that ever happened in the history of Black America); we’re letting ourselves be content with what little knowledge is provided by our biased and outdated textbooks, by the uninterested media, by random, too-short presentations made only during this month. This year, we should try to use this month as it was intended to be used: let’s try to learn about Black History.
