When historian Carter G. Woodson in 1926 started what has since become Black History Month, he did it because black America was under fierce attack at the time and in definite need of some psychic aid.
Rigid segregation was, de jure or de facto, the law of the land. Blacks were relatively powerless politically. The lynching of blacks continued to be a sordid American pastime. The Ku Klux Klan had an estimated four million members, many more sympathizers, and marched en masse in the nation`s capital. A few years earlier, bloody race riots between whites and blacks had taken place throughout the country, including Chicago, leaving hundreds dead.
And virtually nowhere in the mainstream press, movies, literature or school texts were blacks portrayed positively, if depicted at all. Hateful stereotypes fostered white supremacy and black self-doubt. Woodson hoped to change that by teaching young blacks about their people`s contributions to civilization.
Woodson would no doubt be stunned by the degree of change in America since his death in 1950. Integration is the law while blatant racism is no longer acceptable in polite company. Some blacks have achieved significant power, like Gen. Colin Powell, the nation`s top military officer and Douglas Wilder, David Dinkins and Tom Bradley, the chief executives of Virginia, New York City and Los Angeles, respectively.
In addition, a few black Americans are among the richest and most popular people on the globe. The U.S. observes a holiday that commemorates a black man as a national hero. Black pride is a fact of life.
So with all the changes in race relations in the nearly 65 years since its conception, is Black History Month still necessary? And does it help or hurt the cause? The answers depend on whom you ask.
John Hope Franklin, Duke University professor emeritus and the dean of black American history scholars dislikes Black History Month because it ghettoizes black America`s role in the nation`s history. ”I very seldom give talks during Black History Month,” he says. ”I refuse to confine discussions of African-American history to one week or one month.
”I`m more likely to talk about these matters in December or September than February,” he continues. ”It should be spread out over the year. If you concentrate on black history during four weeks, then people feel free to forget about it during the other 11 months. I don`t intend to let them forget.”
Franklin`s view doesn`t reflect the majority opinion however. ”I would argue that most Americans know somewhere between zero and very little African American history,” says James R. Grossman, an assistant professor of American history at the University of Chicago. ”Until that changes you need various and sundry ways to highlight black history. To not have Black History Month would only decrease something that already has too little visibility.”
Walter Schiller, principal of the Willard School, a predominantly white Evanston elementary school, says his staff was concerned about centralizing the teaching of black history into Februrary. ”Our goal is to do it thoughout the year. But at this point it`s still helpful to focus.” During February, students at the school delivered reports over the school intercom on black achievers like poet Phillis Wheatley, author Alex Haley and athletes Wilma Rudolph and Carl Lewis. Next month, Women`s History Month, they`ll do similar reports on women.
Sterling Stuckey, a black who is a history professor at the University of California, Riverside, favors Black History Month. But he says: ”I`m sure when Woodson first projected (the need for spotlighting black history) he didn`t want it to last forever. This was a corrective. I think most blacks would agree that when blacks are fully integrated (into history books and society) there`ll be no need for a special month.”
No one disagrees that a knowledge of black American culture is as essential for whites as it is for blacks if the nation is to solve what scholar W.E.B. DuBois called ”the problem of the 20th Century . . . the problem of the color line.”
”When you learn something about the true history of a people rather than stereotypes, it makes you appreciate those people as people and reduces your chances of being racist,” says Margaret Burroughs, founder of the DuSable Museum on Chicago`s Southside. ”What it comes down to is it`s unintelligent to be racist.”
”I decided to make a study of the Jewish people,” she says, using herself as an example. ”I read every book I could find. It brought me much closer to them, it made me much more sympathetic to their plight when I became aware of the similarities between their history and ours as African Americans.”
The existence of Black History Month also forces many Americans to contemplate ”the enduring issues of race in the contemporary world,” says Joe Trotter, a history professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. ”Especially with the resurgence of racism in recent years,” as manifested by Howard Beach and incidents on college campuses.
Trotter sees another benefit in allocating a month for the study of black history. ”In these days when poverty and drugs are the focus of so many news stories, by looking at how blacks have confronted the difficulties of the past, from slavery, to segregation and into the recent era we can get a perspective and, perhaps, some answers.”
Many curriculums and history books, although improved from 30 years ago, still lack adequate references to black contributions to American history, teachers say. Some of their colleagues will avoid black topics because they`re uninterested or feel ill-equipped to handle the subject matter.
”There are teachers in the school system who would never teach a strand of black history if it weren`t for Black History Month,” says Donna S. Partee, who runs the African-American studies office for the Philadelphia School District.
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Discussions of black contributions to America`s development also suffer in the classroom because of practical time considerations. ”Every year in high school there`s more and more history to teach,” says Bill Branch, an Evanston High School teacher.
”There was a time when we were fortunate to get from the colonial period to the end of World War II before the end of the term,” says Branch. ”Now we have to cover what`s occurred up through Reagan. At the same time black history keeps growing. To merge the two would just be too much. So we need to take time out for special observances.”
Black students at the University of Chicago recently declared Black History Quarter, saying a month wasn`t enough time.
For people both in and out of the classroom, Black History Month means an annual barrage of historic and contemporary information meant to rid them of widely held misconceptions about blacks. Stereotypes of black intellectual inferiority, for instance, collide with facts like it was a black physician
(Daniel Hale Williams) who gets credit for having performed the first successful open-heart surgery and a black technician (Lewis Howard Latimer)
who gave Thomas Edison a long-lasting filament that made the Wizard of Menlo Park`s lightbulb practical.
Some question whether the month-long approach can have any real effect in changing the stereotypes held by non-blacks. ”The jury is still out on whether this kind of awareness brings about the sort of sensitivity we want,” says Branch.
”A lot of people don`t care about other nationalities or ethnic groups, they have trouble keeping up with their own group,” says Stanley Balzekas, a Chicago car dealer and director of the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture. ”Do people really care about people in Uruguay?,” he asks rhetorically. ”But if you`re Uruguayan, it would be good to know about your own culture.” In this light, he endorses Black History Month because it gives black people positive self-images. But he would worry if it caused blacks to view themselves as superior to other communities, he says.
Branch also sees a risk that a member of another ethnic or racial group may resent the annual focus on black culture, feeling that his own group is slighted. ”Sometimes awareness creates animosity,” he says. ”Yes, I`ve seen students who are filled to the brim with black history. The same thing happens with Holocaust studies or Native American history. They`ll say `Why do we have to keep (studying) this?` One of the pitfalls of this kind of observance is you learn that you can`t reach everyone.”
History professor Stuckey believes Black History Month has made a difference, if only in making black America`s past and culture less exotic and more respectable to the average American. ”Just look at all the public service announcements on the radio and TV and the special reports in newspapers and elsewhere,” he says. ”That means very large numbers of Americans are exposed to the subject. This wasn`t true 10 years ago.”
”I don`t go along with the premise that the uninterested, disinterested or antagonistic ought to be skipped,” says Russell Adams, professor of African-American studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. ”I take the cast- thy-bread-upon-the-waters approach. Send it out there and see what happens.”
Adams says Black History Month seemed to be ”far more intense” this year than in the past several, especially on the East Coast.
”It seems to be a reaction to the Reagan years and the Bush administration`s effort to back away from the severity of those years,” he says. (Many observers feel the former president`s relative silence on racial problems fostered racism.)
Adams says he was pursued by Washington`s federal agencies to lecture to mostly white groups of employees during the past month. ”It used to be that they`d say `You`re black and you want to push your stuff so here`s 50 bucks, go ahead.` Now they say, `Here`s $400. Are you available on the 10th?` Now I can get my patio fixed.”