It’s The Last Day of Black History Month

It’s the last day of Black History Month & I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge it in this place (work) where I spend most of my time.

In 1926 Carter G. Woodson, the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, announced the celebration of Negro History Week. In recognition that Black history was largely excluded from academia, Woodson earned his PhD in History, he saw the need to provide support for black history and historians. The specific week was chosen because it contained the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12th) & Frederick Douglass (February 14th). Frederick Douglass was born into enslavement, and didn’t know the exact day of his birth, but he knew it was in the month of February.

In 1976 Black History Week expanded to Black History Month by President Gerald Ford who said it was to “honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

When I was growing up Black History Month was something that I looked forward to. Whether it was recreating the peanut-based “experiments” conducted by George Washington Carver, reenacting speeches made by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, singing the Black National Anthem, or celebrating popular cultural figures of the time like Stevie Wonder, Oprah Winfrey, Arthur Ashe and Nikki Giovanni – this month made me feel seen and valued in a way that I usually didn’t.

More than anything, Black History Month gave space to reexamine the history of people of African descent. Understanding that our history didn’t begin with enslavement, but that our history was rich with world contributions in the form of innovations in the areas of mathematics, medicine, and philosophy (just to name a few) changed the way I saw myself and my future.

This month I was privileged to deliver a presentation at a local church and teach a class at a college in Colorado about this year’s Black History Month theme – African Americans and the Arts. I also attended a presentation at a local library.

This year, in my conversations with others, I’ve been highlighting Zora Neale Hurston. Her work re-emerged from obscurity based on an article written by Alice Walker (author of the Color Purple) in 1975 https://www.allisonbolah.com/site_resources/reading_list/Walker_In_Search_of_Zora.pdf. Zora Neale Hurston was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance, but her work faded from view thereafter. I’m not sure why, but I do know that her work was sometimes criticized for capturing authentic dialects. Some at the time thought that made the people she interviewed sound less intelligent, but as an ethnographer, the work she did is now credited as instrumental in our current understanding of the language and culture of the time. She put additional focus on African American communities in the South and Hoodoo culture. Dr. Yvonne Chireau, describes Hoodoo as “an African American-based tradition that makes use of natural and supernatural elements in order to create and effect change in the human experience.”

If you are interested, a couple of her works include the book Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) which was made into a movie starring Halle Berry (2005). I am currently reading Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” just published in 2018, but it’s based on interviews she conducted in 1927 with Oluale Kossola (Cudjoe Lewis) who at the time was presumed to be the last survivor of the Middle Passage.

There is a documentary called Africatown USA (2019) on Netflix that also tells the story of the last ship that carried enslaved Africans to America (more than 50 years after the United States abolished he international slave trade). Cudjoe Lewis was on that ship – the Clotilda. Although she captured the narrative in 1927, the ship itself wasn’t discovered until 2019. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10265906/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Just wanted to share a few things as the month comes to a close. Happy Black History Month!