This year Black History Month is a time of both celebration and apprehension. We celebrate the 100th anniversary of the origins of Black History Month. The scholar and historian Carter G. Woodson developed Black History Week as a time to lift up the accomplishments and contributions of African Americans at a time when the injustices of Jim Crow were at their height. He chose the second week in February, because it included the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Over the years, the focus on Black history expanded beyond one week. Fifty years after its origin and fifty years ago, President Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976. These special anniversaries are something to celebrate especially during this 250th year of our nation’s history. Black history is truly American history and needs to be embraced throughout the year.The first video posted below summarizes the story of Black History Month.
Yet for all the reasons to celebrate these milestones of Black History Month, there is also a deep sense of apprehension this year. Unlike every President since Gerald Ford, President Trump virutally ignored Black History month on the federal level. From the beginning of his administration, he has actively tried to erase Black history in favor of an idealized whitewashed version of American history that ignores the struggles and contributions of Black Americans. The most recent example came from Philadelphia. The Trump administration ordered the National Park Service to remove interpretive plaques from the site of the original President’s house. The plaques included information about nine enslaved people brought to Philadelphia by President George Washington. Their time was divided between Philadelphia and Washington’s plantation at Mount Vernon, VA so as to avoid a Pennsylvainia law that required enslaved people to be freed if they resided in Pennsylvania for six months. In this way President Washington avoided freeing those enslaved people. Some of them eventually escapted to freedom despite Washington’s efforts to capture them.
The Trump administration’s attempt to supress this history was met by resistance from the people of Philadelphia. Protesters put up homemade signs where the plaques had been. In a creative act of protest, a man who previously acquired the information on the plaques came to the site and read the information aloud for visitors to hear. Some of those visitors took turns reading aloud. Just this week a judge ordered that the plaques be reinstalled. The second and third videos posted below are local news reports from Philadelphia about this ongoing struggle.
The question for this Black History Month is a crucial one – Will we embrace Black history as a vital part of American history or will we allow those in power in Washington to erase Black history in favor of their distorted version of our nation’s history? The ministry of the Cornelius Corps is committed to embracing Black history as an essential part of the history of both our nation and the American church.