If Morgan Freeman, the Oscar-winning African-American actor, had his way there

would be no Black History Month in the USA. "Ridiculous" is how Freeman, who has
played Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, and God in movies, describes it. Though his line
of thinking is supported by many, there are many more who insist Black America still
needs Black History Month, reports Leslie GofFe from New York.
USA: The brigade against
Biacic Histery Menth
B
lack History Month USA is a nationwide
celebration recognised by the US
government and observed by thousands of
US schools and businesses, and by millions
of African-Americans each February. Unlike
its British counterpart, which is celebrated n
October, Black History Month USA has been a fixture
for 87 years nearly a century.
But don't tell the famous African-American
Hollywood actor, Morgan Freeman. "Ridiculous" is
how he describes the month-long celebration. "You are
going to relegate my history to a month?". Freeman
protested when asked on US television a few years ago
why he believed Black History Month (BHM) was
ridiculous.
"Which month is White History Month?", Freeman
asked the reporter of European descent. Fuming,
Freeman said, "I don't want a Black History Month.
Black history is American history."
Well, he was both right and wrong. He was right
when he said black history was an integral and
inseparable part of American history. He was also right
to say the history of Africans in America, from chattel
slavery to the first black president, was infinitely too
large, too extraordinarily complex, and just too damn
rich, to be tackled in a single month; and the shortest
month of the year, February, at that.
But Freeman - who is no Uncle Tom and has, in
fact, long been a staunch defender of important black
causes - was wrong to call for an end to Black History
Month. However short or compressed the celebration
might be, it is nonetheless an important month-long
series of events that remind African-Americans of where
they were yesterday, where they are today, and where
they intend to be tomorrow.
Despite their increasing population, now said to be
over 40 million, African-Americans are still considered
a minority group in the larger American constellation,
and they need events such as BHM to build solidarity
among themselves and within the larger American
society.
That is not to say Morgan Freeman does not have
16 New African October 2013
his supporters. There are many well-meaning African-
Americans, and many not so well-meaning whites, who
believe as Freeman does, that it is time to bring to a
close the annual parade of important people and events
in the history of black America.
Among tbose who want to call a halt is Trudy
Bourgeois, an African-American entrepreneur. "Black
History Month," sbe says bluntly, "needs to go away." It
should have gone away a long time ago, she adds. "Are
you shocked," Bourgeois asks, "that I would say such a
thing?"
And she is not alone. Clinton Yates, an African-
American columnist at the Washington Post, confessed
in a recent column tbat after yeats as an ardent
adherent of Black History Month, he had begun to
question its value.
"I wonder," Yates wrote, "has Black History Month
lost its purpose?" It had not, he concluded. But he is
Morgan Freeman, despite
his views on Black History
Month, has been a staunch
defender of important
black causes. Below: Dr
King (centre left in the
crowd) and other civil
rights leaders during the
'March on Washington'
worried the celebration bas "lost its way". Tbis view is
supported by otber people of African descent. Samuel
Gebru, the director of an Ethiopian organisation in
Massachusetts, says "Black History Month today is
an anachronistic holiday that continues to isolate the
history of African-Americans to one month - the
shortest of the year."
B ig b u s i n e s s t a k e s o v e r
The problems witb Black History Montb are many, its
critics say. First, BHM sbould be celebrated every day,
not just once a year. Tbey say, and not witbout cause,
tbat tbe montb bas been bijacked by big business,
wbo use the event to target African-American
consumers.
In February last year, Nike launched three BHM-
themed sneakers, each pair costing around $150.
This past BHM 2013, Nike debuted its special "Black
History Montb Product GoUection", which featured
jackets, caps and sneakers with the initials "BHM" and
"Be Bold, Be True" emblazoned on tbem.
Critics of BHM say the month-long celebration bas
not been bold or true in a long time. Tbeir chief charge
is that BHM is outdated. "Do African-Americans,
in 2013, in a post-racial America, really need a
remembrance of tbings past?" they ask. "What need
do black people bave of an event to puff up racial pride
wben tbere is a black man in the White House?"
But this is where they shoot themselves in the foot.
They forget to add that tbis black man, Barack Obama,
is in tbe Wbite House only until 2016, wben bis term
ends. And who knows how long it will be for another
black man, or black woman, to get into tbe Wbite
House again, if there ever will be an again!
BHM's job, tberefore, is to accentuate tbe positive
and eliminate tbe negative and latch on to tbe
affirmative. And tbe most positive and affirmative of
BHM tales usually require the mention of three black
men: Daniel Hale Williams, Charles Drew, and Garret
Morgan, who achieved enormous things against the
odds.
For example, Dr Hale Williams, the son of a freed
slave, performed the first successful open heart surgery
operation in the USA, and Dr Gharles Drew was the
physician and surgeon who helped set up the first blood
bank. Tragically, and most ironically, Dr Drew died
after being injured in a car crash and being refused a
blood transfusion by wbite doctors.
And let's not forget Garret Morgan, wbose fatber
was a slave. Morgan invented tbe gas mask and the first
traffic light. Black people have been buoyed by tbese
sorts of B H M story for years.
T h e h i s t o r y
BHM started out as "Negro History Week" in 1926
and became "Black History Month" in 1976. Now it
is increasingly known as "African-American History
Month". It did not come easily and so should not be
surrendered easily. After all, the academic and activist.
Carter G. Woodson, who came up with it - and who
is referred to now as "the father of black bistory"
- fought for years to win acknowledgment for his
New African October 2013 17
celebration of black pride.
After earning his doctorate at Harvard University
in 1912, and becoming only the second black person to
do so, Woodson moved to Washington DC, where, in
1915, he set up his Association for the Study of Negro
Life and History. Unmarried and without children, he
threw himself into his work.
In 1926, after much tweaking, Woodson launched
his "Negro History Week". The annual celebration
would, he said, take place in the second week of
February in order to coincide with the birthdays of
"The Creat Emancipator" Abraham Lincoln and the
African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
"The Negroes seized upon the idea as the thing upon
which they had long been waiting," a thrilled Woodson
told a black newspaper in 1926. Of course, he was not
the first to set out to educate the mis-educated. Other
black historians and authors had tried before him,
but their books mostly gathered dust on bookshelves,
unread by the people they were intended for.
It took Woodson to make black history into a cause
and not just a book project. He had been employed for
a time as a professor at some black colleges, and he took
the giant step down from the ivory tower to share his
knowledge with everyday people.
Often struggling to pay his bills, Woodson was
harsh in his criticism ofthe black professional class.
They are, he said, "worthless in the development of
their people."
His "Negro History Week" was just what the
African-American masses needed in 1926, a year in
which the Ku Klux Klan was at its height and in which
23 black men were lynched. While some, like the
African Blood Brotherhood, a militant, semi-secret
organisation, called for an eye for an eye, Woodson, the
revolutionary ofthe mind, told African-Americans to
revolutionise their thinking.
"To handicap a student by teaching him that his
black face is a curse and that his struggle to change
his condition is hopeless" is, Woodson wrote in his
groundbreaking 1933 book. The Mis-Education ofthe
Negro, "the worst sort of lynching."
He also wrote, tellingly, that "if you make a man
feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him
to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself."
If that man is made to believe that fate intended that he
be an outcast then, Woodson said, "you do not have to
order him to the back door. He will go without being
told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will
demand one."
This is what made Carter C. Woodson, alongside
Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois, one ofthe
towering black thinkers and activists ofthe early 20'''
century.
Now, having come up with the idea for "Negro
History Week" himself, Woodson was determined to
direct how African-Americans experienced it. He set
themes he felt ought to be explored each year. In 1934,
for example, his designated theme was: "Contribution
ofthe Negro in Poetry, in Painting, in Sculpture and in
Science."
In 1937, the theme was: "American Negro
History from the Time of Importation from Africa
up to the Present Day." In 1929, he had chosen
"Possibility of Putting Negro History in the
Top: African-Americans
being addressed by hooded
members of the Ku Klux
Klan in 1938. Above: Carter
G. Woodhouse, who made
black history a cause
Curriculum" as the theme.
Woodson had no trouble convincing black
churchmen to preach about black achievement in
their sermons. Nor did he have trouble convincing the
presidents ofthe 100 or so black colleges in the USA to
put Negro history on their curriculum.
He fiiiled miserably, however, in convincing the
many schools and colleges in which whites were in
the majority to open their doors and minds to black
history. They shut their eyes to his teaching materials
and closed their ears to his lectures.
The white man, they told the quiet black man of
letters, was the measure of all things, and other races
simply didn't measure up. A white man, they told him,
was the first man and Europe was the first continent.
Woodson countered this view in his writings and
lectures. He told African-Americans that it was the
African, not the European, who was the first man, and
that Africa, not Europe, had been the first continent.
Just as Eve had come from Adam's rib, Woodson said,
so the white man had come out ofthe black man, and
had come, whether he liked it or not, out of Africa, too.
"If the white man wants to hold on to it," Woodson
once said, "let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is
able, should develop and carry out a programme of his
own."
This programme was Negro History Week, which
got a boost in the 1940s and 1950s with the emergence
18 New African October 2013
I
of the Civil Rights Movement.
In the 1940s, Negro History Week found an ally
in US President Harry Truman. He had won African-
Americans over when the once racially-restricted
jobs in the defence industry were offered to African-
Americans. Truman won more praise when he pushed
through landmark legislation de-segregating the US
armed forces, and burnished his black credentials
additionally, in 1946, when he became the first US
president to give his support and sanction to Negro
History Week.
Asked by the International Workers Order
organisation what he thought about the annual
celebration, Truman wrote in a January 1946 letter: "I
am glad to hear that Negro History Week again will be
celebrated. The achievements of the Negro have been
remarkable. It is very essential that we have knowledge
of the past of a people in order to understand their aims
and aspirations for the future. I congratulate ail those
who seek to extend this knowledge. Their efforts are
most praiseworthy."
But though Truman seemed to be a supporter
of Negro History Week, he was no fan of African-
Americans. He often called blacks "niggers" and
"coons" when with white friends and family in private,
his associates revealed after his death.
"Harry is no more for nigger equality than any
of us!", the president's sister, Mary Ann, told a white
journalist around the same time in 1946 that Truman
had been expressing his support for Negro History
Week.
Other whites, too, seemed ready, in the 1940s, to
relent - a little. The departments of education in two
southern states. North Carolina and West Virginia,
agreed to ask their schoolteachers to cooperate in
C A N B L A C K
H IS T O R Y M O N T H
B E IM P R O V E D ?
O F C O U R S E IT
C A N . S H O U L D IT
H O N O U R A M O R E
D IV E R S E G R O U P
O F A F R IC A N -
A M E R IC A N S
R A T H E R T H A N
C E L E B R A T E
T H E S A M E O L D
S T A N D B Y S
E V E R Y Y E A R ?
O F C O U R S E IT
S H O U L D .
us P resident H arry T ruman
expressed support for
N egro H istory Week.
E ndorsed hy M artin L uther
K ing, Jr. {above i), it went
from strength to strength.
If it was good enough for D r
K ing, its successor B lack
H istory M onth should be
good enough for M organ
F reeman (/), here pictured
with Zindzi M andela
the highlighting of black achievement during Negro
History Week each February.
In the 1960s, with Black Power on the rise and the
Civil Rights Movement (led hy Martin Luther King)
non-violently changing the face of America, Negro
History Week got an even bigger boost.
M artin L uther K ing' s
endorsement
I n 1964, Mar t i n Lut het Ki ng ment i oned Negr o
Hi st or y Week pr omi nent l y in t he i nt r oduct i on to
his hook. Why We Can't Wait. "Not all of hi st ory is
recorded in t he books supplied t o school chi l dren in
Har l em or Bi r mi ngham, " Ki ng wr ot e, poi nt i ng out
t hat t he t ext books t hat black chi l dren were requi red to
read were rout i nel y "censored by t he whi t e writers and
purchasers of boar d of educat i on books".
Ki ng credi t ed t he organisers of Negr o Hi st or y Week
wi t h hel pi ng black youngst ers discover t hat black men,
like Ct i spus At t ucks, who was t he first mar t yr of t he
Amer i can Revol ut i on, and Benj ami n Banneker, who
hel ped design t he US Congress Capi t ol bui l di ng in
Was hi ngt on D C yet got no credit for it, had done much
for Ameri ca.
Ki ng also credi t ed Negr o Hi st or y Week wi t h
l et t i ng Afri can-Ameri cans know "how, for 2 00 years,
wi t hout wages, black peopl e, br ought to t hi s l and in
slave ships and in chai ns ... hel ped ... lift t hi s nat i on
from colonial obscuri t y to c omma ndi ng influence in
domest i c commer ce and worl d t rade. "
If Negr o Hi st or y Week was good enough for M a rti n
Lut her Ki ng, Black Hi st or y Mont h shoul d be good
enough for Mor gan Freeman. After all, after D r Ki ng' s
endorsement , Negr o Hi st or y Week went from st r engt h
to st r engt h, and in 197 6, Woodson' s celebration of
black achi evement was grant ed federal recogni t i on by
t he US Congress!
That year, t he name was changed from Negr o
Hi st or y Week to Black Hi st or y Mont h. "We can seiz e
t he oppor t uni t y to honour t he t oo-oft en negl ect ed
accompl i shment s of black Amer i cans in every at ea of
endeavour t hr oughout our history," Woods on said.
Since 197 6, each Amer i can presi dent has issued a
Black Hi st or y Mont h pr ocl amat i on. And, interestingly,
in honour of all t he wor k t hat D r Car t er G . Woods on
di d to pr omot e t he st udy of Afri can-Ameri can history,
an or nament of hi m is placed on t he Whi t e Hous e
Chr i st mas tree every year.
By t he t i me of his deat h in 195 0, at t he age of 7 4,
city and state officials all across t he Uni t ed States
had begun, each February, t o issue procl amat i ons
announci ng t he arrival of Negr o Hi st or y Week.
So, can Black Hi st or y Mont h be improved? Of
course it can! Shoul d it honour a more diverse gr oup of
Afri can-Ameri cans rat her t han celebrate t he same old
st andbys every year? Of course it should!
Afri can-Ameri cans have not come as far as t hey
t hi nk t hey have. They still have a very l ong way t o go,
and therefore t hey need t he boost of pride t hat Black
Hi st or y Mont h provides every February, al l owi ng
t hem to endur e t he ot her 11 mont hs of bei ng black in
Ameri ca. BHM
New African October 2013 19