“Those who have no record of what
their forebears have accomplished lose the
inspiration which comes from the teaching of
biography and history.” - Carter G. Woodson
“A people without the knowledge of
their past history, origin and culture is
like a tree without roots” - Marcus Garvey
The need to once and for all embrace a reasonable and
comprehensive interpretation of African
history that inspires and uplifts Black people
is evident when examining how Black History
Month is celebrated in US culture. Like most
other historic reflections, Black History
Month is sanitized with stagnate and
idealistic interpretations, aimed at removing
the vital elements of historical struggle and
revelation. Today it is customary during the
month of February for media to make
superficial sound bites about
"African-American" pioneers in technology,
sports, scholarship and anti-slavery activism.
While schools highlight leaders like Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas and
several others, rarely is the celebration used
to thoroughly reflect on the ethics, political
vision, and philosophical insights of these
leaders. Rarely does the celebration clarify
the socio-political milieu in which they
struggled and glean relevant lessons from
historical context. Further, connections to
Africa are generally severed at the Middle
Passage, instead of recognizing the subsequent
interconnections between the economic
circumstances, cultural expressions, and
political movements of African people. This is
expected since it isn't difficult to see how
knowledge of these connections conflict with a
corporate capitalist culture that has
effectively commercialized Black History Month
as a means to advertise commodities.
Nationwide Insurance airs a touching radio
commercial that doesn't even offer history,
but simply appeals to insure “personal Black
history” by buying life insurance.
However, a proper examination of Black History Month must
also take into account the laws of change and
historical development to which everything is
subject. In 1926, Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson,
an African historian, writer, and educator,
established Negro History Week to honor the
contributions of African people in North
America. For "historical clarity" African is
being used by this author to refer to all
people of African descent, whether they are
born in North or South America, the Caribbean,
Europe or any other part of the world. Born in
1875 to former slaves in New Canton, Virginia,
the extent and scope to which the Harvard
educated Dr. Woodson identified did not extend
beyond North America. Woodson even chose the
month of February for the observance of Negro
History Week because the birthdays of
abolitionist Frederick Douglass and US
President Abraham Lincoln fall in this month.
Regardless, Dr. Woodson contributed profoundly
to our understanding that a better knowledge
of history is critical for African people, at
least in North America, to achieve greater
pride, self-determination and collective
progress. As go the laws of change, Negro
History Week itself transformed. About fifty
years later, near the close of the Black Power
era (early 1970s), the celebration was renamed
Black History Week and even later expanded to
Black History Month in 1976. These changes
reflected a progression in how African people
throughout the world had come to identify.
Dr. Woodson insisted that history was not the mere
gathering of facts or a chronology of events,
but that the object of historical study is to
arrive at a reasonable interpretation of the
social conditions of the period being studied.
Applying this objective to the social
conditions in which Dr. Woodson lived reveals
coexistence with the 1914 Garvey movement in
the formation of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Black
Star Line. The UNIA's movement, led by the
Honorable Marcus Garvey, broadened the
ideological scope for African people beyond
the confines of birth-country and into the
extensions of the Diaspora.
Marcus Garvey offered a more inclusive philosophy of how
African people could identify, reflect and
engage. Before the UNIA, the Pan-African
movement found an earlier expression in 1900
at the first Pan-African Conference convened
in London by Sylvester Williams. Since that
first conference there have been seven
subsequent Pan-African Congresses, the seventh
taking place in Uganda in 1994. Consistent
with the teachings of Dr. Woodson, the
inspiration that comes from biography and
history must necessarily include the context
that connects the "American negro" to a
broader African people scattered and
struggling in 135 countries worldwide.
Since the founding of Negro History Week, a host of
positive and negative personalities, events
and historical developments have transpired,
affording African history instructive and
dynamic lessons for humanity. More has also
been learned about philosophies and methods of
history. Nevertheless, the most instructive
lessons are largely neglected. Black History
Month must do more than emphasize the
inspiring achievements of great individuals.
It must also help in refining a historical
philosophy and method of study that helps us
understand the prevailing conditions of our
time. Historical study should explain such
phenomena as how young Africans from the Congo
to Haiti, from urban neighborhoods in the USA
to other parts of the world are armed and
wreaking havoc on their own communities. It
should be able to explain how a people from a
continent that has spawned some of the
greatest contributions to world civilization
are, today, persistently plagued by apathy,
disease, poverty and political disempowerment
in communities around the world. Neglecting
the history that connects Black experiences
and struggles beyond the confines of a
particular country renders Black History Month
deficient and leaves room for the notion of
African inferiority.
Historical context presupposes more than outstanding
achievements and personalities or else is it
sterilized into something incapable of
explaining present global challenges and
illuminating future direction. For example, it
is clearly significant that in March 1978, the
US National Security Council issued secret
memorandum 46 in response to directives from
the president that "a comprehensive review be
made of current developments in Black Africa
from the point of view of their possible
impacts on the black movement in the United
States". This memo demonstrates the attitude
and multiplicity of political and economic
interests influencing US policy toward Africa
and African people:
"…. adverse to U.S. strategic interests, the nationalist
liberation movement in black Africa can act as
a catalyst with far reaching effects on the
American black community by stimulating its
organizational consolidation and by inducing
radical actions."
Surely it is a positive thing for any African community to
achieve greater organizational consolidation
and radical change from adversity. Instead,
the memo recommends:
1. Specific steps should be taken with the help of
appropriate government agencies to inhibit
coordinated activity of the Black Movement in
the United States.
2. Special clandestine operations should be launched by
the CIA to generate mistrust and hostility in
American and world opinion against joint
activity of the two forces…
3. US embassies to Black African countries specially
interested in southern Africa must be highly
circumspect in view of the activity … opposing
the objectives and methods of U.S. policy
toward South Africa…
4. The FBI should mount surveillance operations against
Black African representatives and collect
sensitive information on those…include facts
on their links with the leaders of the Black
movement in the United States, thus making
possible at least partial neutralization of
the adverse effects of their activity.
This history demonstrates that African people need to
develop institutions for coordinating our
political activities internationally; to
generate faith and unconditional support for
these activities; and to take control of
information about our history and current
geo-political events.
It’s common knowledge that the continent of Africa is the
most naturally rich continent on earth. It is
also painfully clear that African people
everywhere are among the poorest and most
oppressed. A proper reflection of Black
history can combat this by educating people
about the forces in conflict with African
progress and providing lessons from past
successes and failures. To combat inferiority
complexes, African people need to know that
profound forms of organized resistance have
been and are being waged against slavery,
colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.
It is inspiring to know that the Civil Rights and Black
Power Movements in the US were taking place
simultaneously with similar struggles for
independence and self-determination in Africa
and the Diaspora. Leaders like Malcolm X,
Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Dubois, Sekou Ture and
others were meeting with one another, making
plans and concretizing the Pan-African agenda.
Knowledge of such things has proven to resolve
notions of inferiority and to imbue African
people with a greater sense of social
obligation. The social movements in African
history intersect across geographical
boundaries and are energized by class
struggle. The context in which we consider
ourselves must be commensurate with the
exigencies before us, which exist within an
increasingly globalized yet more polarized
world. Just as Negro History Week has evolved
into Black or African-American History Month,
to continue having value, it must evolve into
a Pan-African Historical Context.