February is Black History Month
When I worked in the advertising department of a large St. Louis department store, the corporation would schedule a full-page advertisement in February that recognized Black History Month. The ad, crafted by the designers and art directors at headquarters in New York City, would often be slated to run in the last week of the month-long celebration, and often, on the last day of February. After a couple of years of placing the ads in the newspapers with which we had contracts, I started to wonder why, if the event was a month-long recognition, the corporation chose to schedule the ads so late in the month. I came to believe that headquarters, while outwardly espousing a belief in diversity, may not have been entirely committed. Some other occurrences helped to contribute to that belief but, even as a manager, I never voiced that suspicion to my bosses.
Carter G. Woodson, an African-American historian, scholar, educator and publisher established “Negro History Week” in 1926 to recognize the contributions of African-Americans to U.S. history, choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. In a speech to Hampton Institute students, Woodson said “We are going back to that beautiful history (of black achievement) and it is going to inspire us to greater achievements.” In 1976 “Negro History Week” became “Black History Month,” and since the mid-70s, every American president, Democrat and Republican, has issued a proclamation endorsing the celebration.
The poet Alan Dugan wrote of a loving relationship, “Nothing is plumb, level or square,” and perhaps the same could be said of notions of cultural inclusion. An African-American actor is often quoted as having said that there should be no “Black History,” a position often seized upon by those who are irritated by or hostile toward the idea that black people should be separately recognized as a notable entity in American society. The actor’s “only American history” position misses the point that African-Americans’ accomplishments had previously been purposely excluded from that “American” history. My two best friends are both teachers (and are also non-black) and each February they craft Black History Month celebrations for their elementary school classrooms. They’ve done their research and do not rely on my friendship to add to the kids’ experience, though I have volunteered in both of their classrooms, one in Indiana and the other in Florida. In early 1972, singer/songwriter Nina Simone performed for a Los Angeles, California audience, whose number included me and my first bride. “There are more than 22 million black people in this country,” Simone intoned as she worked her magic on the grand piano at which she sat, continuing, “I only want one million to buy this record.” She then launched into a song written to honor the black playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who died in 1965 at the age of 34. The song was “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”
I am not entirely convinced that those long-ago ads submitted late in the month of February were done as a demonstration of mean-spiritedness; it is more likely that the lateness was a product of insensitivity. But in a culture where an anger-mongering radio host is awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom instead of to a 100-year-old Tuskegee Airman, I am insuring that my pale, red-headed and blue-eyed granddaughter is growing up in a multicultural world, where TV characters speak other languages than English, a world where she will be unconcerned about the lyrics to a song that begins, “To be young, gifted and black…”
cjon3acd@att.net