Is Black History Still Relevant?
By: Dr. Tanikka Price, Chief Education & Equity Officer, Health Impact Ohio
When thinking about what to write about for Black History Month 2023, I immediately thought of whether or not Black History Month is still relevant. Since its inception, Black History Month has been a time set aside to celebrate and observe the contributions of African Americans. Black History Week was started by Carter G. Woodson, considered the “father of black history” in 1926. February was chosen because both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass celebrate their birthdays during that month. This brings me to whether or not Black History Month is still relevant. I think it is:
1. Black history is still not integrated into American history. Although we have come a long way in our teaching pedagogy, one thing that has remained the same is that there is very little mention of the impact of African Americans on American Culture. In Lies My Teacher Told Me, the author notes,
“American history textbooks promote the belief that most important developments in world history are traceable to Europe. To grant too much human potential to pre-Columbian Africans might jar European American sensibilities. As Samuel Marble put it, “The possibility of African discovery of American has never been a tempting one for American historians.” Teachers and curricula that present African history and African Americans in a positive light are often condemned for being Afrocentric.”[1]
My major in college was American Culture and I studied specifically the impact of African Americans on American Culture, Africana Studies was my minor. I was floored by how much African Americans actually contributed to American Culture that has never be accounted for in our school textbooks. Remember Carter G. Woodson, mentioned above? If you ever heard of him, did you know that he was the second African American to graduate with a Doctorate from Harvard? He was also one of the first scholars to research African American history and life.[2] I owe my minor in Africana Studies to him!
Although the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t enacted into law until January 1, 1862, John Mercer Langston became the first African American Lawyer right here in Ohio in 1854! Four years prior, in 1950, Lucy Stanton became the first African American woman to graduate with a four year degree.[3] Hard to believe this was happening while in other parts of our country, African Americans were still enslaved. Did you know African Americans contributed to the traffic light, the cotton gin? And also African Americans created many household products that you use including the GPS, central heating, the ironing board, toilet paper holder, dishwashing detergent, and ice cream scooper! Who knew!?
2. Our history helps us to remember so that atrocities never happen again. There is a reason why there are holocaust museums that detail what was done to the Jews in Nazi Germany. It is so no one ever forgets and so it does not happen again. Why is it easier for us to look at how other countries treat those they deem as “other” while we want to turn a blind eye to our own history? Seeing what has happened during the TransAtlantic slave trade gives us a view into what length people will go to in order to make wealth for themselves and their families. Most people don’t stop to think of the ways that America’s wealth was built on the back (literally) of the enslaved Africans and the slave trades. Recently several banks have come out admitting that their wealth and success was tied to the slave trade. These banks include HSBC, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citi Bank.[4]
3. Modern medicine would never be where it is without doctors practicing on enslaved men and women. The fact that there are books called “Medical Apartheid,” “Dying While Black” and “An American Health Dilemma, Volumes I and II” all of which detail the history of African American health issues from slavery to the present.
4. When writing my grandmother’s book, titled, “Walking in the Shadows: The Biography of Lillie Owusu” I was shocked to find out that my grandmother, who earned a college degree at Lincoln University and attended Michigan State for her graduate degree before having my mother and dropping out, picked cotton to earn money to go to college. As a matter of fact, her mother, who was also college educated, one generation from slavery, regularly picked cotton as a Widower to make ends meet for her six children during the Great Depression. My Grandmother also worked as a domestic during college, cleaning white women’s homes to have money for books, clothes and travel to supplement the full scholarship she’d earned as Valedictorian of her HS graduating class. “Those days” were not that long ago.
5. Black History is being created every day. From the nomination of the first Black woman Supreme Court justice, to the first Historically Black College and University swim team and gymnastic teams to win nationals in 2023, every day African Americans are creating Black History, accomplishing tasks that have long been denied to them.
[1] Lies My Teacher Told Me, (New York) Simon and Schuester, 1995.
[2] 31 Black History Facts You Should Know (oprahdaily.com)