February is Black History Month. Here's the history behind the celebration
Saturday marks the start of Black History Month, a time to honor Black people and the Black experience.
And while Black History celebrations have been held for decades, some people may not realize how this month-long celebration began.
It all started with a scholar named Carter G. Woodson, who founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) in 1915 to research, preserve, and disseminate knowledge about Black life.
Greg Carr, an associate professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C., said that Woodson founded the organization while he was a graduate student.
In February 1926, Woodson started Negro History Week, and after university students and staff pushed to extend the celebration, it evolved into Black History Month as it is currently recognized in the United States.
What led to the start of Black History Month, and why February?
Born in Virginia, Woodson was the second African American to receive a PhD from Harvard and the first to earn a PhD from Harvard born to enslaved parents, according to Carr.
Woodson was made an honorary member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity on Feb. 10, 1917, and in 1924, members of the fraternity, called Ques, launched the Negro History and Literature Week, according to Carr.
“Dr. Woodson kind of seized upon his membership in Omega Psi Phi and his determination to link the study of our history to communities,” Carr said. “He recruited the Omegas into helping him establish what he called Negro History Week, which emerged a couple of years later.”
He chose the second week of February for Negro History Week because of its link to Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on Feb. 12 and Frederick Douglass’ birthday or Douglass Day, which falls on Feb. 14.
Students at Black and white colleges demanded Negro History Week extension
Woodson is credited as the “Father of Black History,” according to ASALH. He died of a heart attack in 1950, but even after his death, community members demanded a continuation of the celebration he created. Black History Month really took off in the 1960s during the Black Power movement, said Carr.
Students on college campuses such as Howard University, Tuskegee University in Alabama, and Kent State University in Ohio pushed for a more inclusive curriculum, complete with African American and global Black history and culture, he said.
“At HBCUs like Howard and Tuskegee, they wanted the entire university to reorient itself around the concepts of Black history and culture,” he said. “On white college campuses like Kent State, the students and some faculty administrators pushed for the celebration of (Negro History Week) to not only be elevated, but extended.”
On the Kent State University Campus, a student-led organization called Black United Students (BUS) pushed to extend the entire month of February to celebrate Black history.
The first observance of Black History Month took place at the university in 1970, according to Kent State University. The school eventually became known as the birthplace of Black History Month.
President Gerald R. Ford recognized Black History Month on Feb. 10, 1976, according to the National Archives. A decade later, President Ronald Reagan issued Proclamation 5443, recognizing National Black (Afro-American) History Month in 1986.
‘History had me glued to the seat’
Wanting to ensure the full story of African American history, Woodson brought together scholars from all disciplines when he created ASALH, including historians, sociologists, political scientists, as well as those in humanities, according to Cassandra Newby-Alexander, founder of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies at Norfolk State University in Virginia.
“They [textbooks] were referencing slavery and people who were enslaved as if they were servants and members of the family, highlighting mythical stories about how tied in Black people were to white people,” she said. "He wanted to counter all that mythmaking so that the story of what really happened could be told and communicated to young people.”
In addition to proposing Negro History Week, Woodson also developed curriculum materials in the 1930s, said Carr, from Howard University. His organization would send kits to teachers to celebrate. The kits included pictures, lessons for teachers, plays for historical performances and posters with notable dates and people, according to Harvard University.
One student, Claudette Colvin, was enrolled in history classes at her high school, which later inspired her to make a life-altering decision, said Carr.
On March 2, 1955, Colvin was just 15 years old and enrolled at Booker T. Washington High School in Montgomery, Alabama, reported the Montgomery Advertiser, part of the Paste BN network. She was riding a bus when some white passengers boarded. By law, she was required to sit at the back of the bus, while white people sat at the front.
The two racial divides were separated by a section called “no man’s land” in which Colvin and three other Black passengers sat. The white bus driver told the Black passengers to get up so the white people who’d just boarded could sit down. Although three riders moved to the back of the bus, Colvin stayed in her seat.
“I felt as though Harriet Tubman was pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth was pushing me down on the other,” she previously said. “So, therefore, history had me glued to the seat. That was the reason I could not move.”
Colvin was eventually taken to jail and charged with disorderly conduct, assault, and violating segregation laws. Activists protested, but she was found guilty at her first trial.
On appeal, the judge dismissed the segregation and disorderly conduct charges, leaving the assault charge on her record. She was sentenced to indefinite probation until 2021, nearly 67 years after her 1955 arrest, a Montgomery Juvenile Court judge expunged her record.
‘We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history’
“The Negro History Bulletin” was a newsletter published by Woodson’s organization, ASALH. In March 1950, Woodson posthumously published an article describing how community members can celebrate Negro History Week, Carr said.
In his article, Woodson wrote that oftentimes speakers invited to connect with students during Negro History Week have “traditional discussion of the race problem and how it has been or can be solved,” but that’s not all there is to discuss, he said.
Woodson viewed Negro History Week as an opportunity for people to share what they’ve learned during the other 11 months of the year, Carr said.
Newby-Alexander said that in some cases, Negro History Week marked the start of discussions on how communities were celebrating throughout the year.
“If you had a principal who was really involved in this, there were all kinds of images and things going on every week or every month that highlighted Black heroes, that had lessons talking about them, events in American history that were inclusive of Black people,” she said. “This was unheard of in most of the school systems that were not Black.”
In an earlier writing in 1943, Woodson himself wrote that “what we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.”
“We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history,” he wrote.
Contributing: Brian Lyman, The Montgomery Advertiser
Saleen Martin is a reporter on Paste BN’s NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Email her at sdmartin@usatoday.com.