Why do we celebrate Black History Month?
Morgan Freeman, one of America’s very accomplished actors,
and an African-American, has been critical in the past of a month dedicated to
African-American history. Black history, he emphasized, “is American history.”
I would like to think that all Americans would agree with
black history being American history. Was that not part of Martin Luther King
Jr.’s dream as well? When the historian, Carter Woodson, first designated the
second week of February as “Negro History Week” in 1926, to coincide with the
birthdays of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick
Douglass, an escaped slave turned abolitionist, it was his hope that a week to
highlight a culture integral to America would ultimately phase out once black
history became that integral part of U.S history that we study in textbooks,
among other materials. Whether or not Woodson’s wish has come true continues to
be part of an ongoing conversation.
We celebrate Black History Month to continue to honor the
lives of black men and women who paved the way. Those who refused to sit at the
back of the bus, or to vacate their seats at lunch counters. Those who were the
first to accomplish something in the arts and sciences. Those who were
assassinated while engaged in the struggle to make America, not Black America,
but America a more just nation. Those who continue to do these very things.
Yes, we can celebrate the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Paul Robeson,
Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and all those who made a difference in our lives,
all year round. But for now, we also have February, the shortest month of the
year.
2015 marks 50 years since Malcolm X was gunned down at the
Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. That happened this month, on the 21st. Your library has a number of books about Malcolm X, including the more recent biography
of him written by Manning Marable: Malcolm
X: A Life of Reinvention. It is a wonderful read, with more detail than we
read in The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
We also have Spike Lee’s phenomenal film about Malcolm X. If any of you have seen Ali, you might agree that Mario Van
Peebles resembled Malcolm much more than Denzel Washington did, but both
embodied the spirit of the man.
Throughout this month, we will highlight more of what the Library has in literature and art in observance of Black History.
Until then, from
the late Maya Angelou:
The free bird thinks of another
breeze
and the trade winds soft through the
sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn
bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave
of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare
scream
his wings are clipped and his feet
are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
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