February is Black History Month. It started in February 1926, 99 years ago this month, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week. He chose the week in February that includes the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. His purpose was to make Black history accessible to the Black community during a time of oppressive racial segregation that treated Black people as inferior to whites and as second class citizens. Dr. Woodson was the second Black person to earn a doctorate at Harvard University. One of his professors there claimed that Black people had no culture. This widespread racist attitude meant that the accomplishments and struggles of Black people were excluded from the way history was taught throughout the country. Dr. Woodson spent the rest of his life and career dedicated to challenging the whitewashing of American history and lifting up Black history as an essential aspect of American history. Over the years, Negro History Week expanded to Black History Month. In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially recognized the national commemoration of Black History month.
Ninety nine years after the first Negro History Week, we are facing contemporary efforts to whitewash our nation’s history. Just last week the President issued an Executive Order called “Ending Radical Indoctination in K-12 Schooling.” It begins with the following words:
Parents trust America’s schools to provide their children with a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand. In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight.
These supposedly radical ideologies include teaching the truth of American history including the legacy and reality of systemic racism. The rationale for excluding teaching the details of our racial history is couched in language about producing “guilt,” “anguish,” and “psychological distress.” as well as “adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.” All these are ways of avoiding or minimizing the truth in favor of a whitewashed version of our history that the Executive Order refers to as “patriotic education.” This is based on the dangerous and misguided assumption that patriotism excludes criticism of unjust policies and practices that perpetuate systemic racism in favor of promoting a vague “color blindness.” The succinct words of Dr. King point us to an authentic patriotism when he said, “The greatness of America is the right to protest for right.” As we celebrate Black History Month in 2025, may we commemorate both its origins in the dedicated work of Dr. Carter G. Woodson and the urgency to learn, teach, and promote history that refuses to whitewash the truth.
The video posted below provides a brief history of Black History Month.