One can tell a great deal about a people, about a nation, by what it deems important enough to remember: what graces the walls of its galleries? What elements of a country’s identity are featured in its national museums? What images appear on its currency and what holidays are celebrated?
I would suggest, however, that one learns even more by examining what a nation chooses to forget.
What sins of the past, what decisions and what groups are omitted from the national memory reveal not only a great deal about a nation’s history, but about its current political and societal concerns. The challenges of the past and the burden of forgetting weighs heavily on a nation’s subconscious. In the UK and in the United States, what is often forgotten or undervalued is the history and the experiences of its black citizens.
The creation of a specific time period to recognise and celebrate the contributions and presence of African Americans was the idea of Carter G Woodson, a Harvard-trained historian who launched Negro History Week in February 1926 to mark the births of Abraham Lincoln, a president whose proclamation of emancipation began a slow process towards ending the institution of slavery, and Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and freedom fighter whose escape from enslavement contributed mightily to the burgeoning US anti-slavery movement. Woodson’s work eventually became a model for the creation of Black History month in the UK – first launched in 1987, partially as a response to the urban riots and racial tensions of the 1980s.
Despite the time difference in their creation, Black History Month in the US and the UK share a common vision and purpose: to battle a sense of historical amnesia and remind all citizens that black people were also a contributing part of the nation. Both months were envisioned as a way to counter the invisibility of black people and to challenge the negative imagery and stereotypes that were often the only manner black people were depicted in popular culture and in the media. By emphasising stories of black achievement and resilience, the month would focus a nation’s attention on the positive aspects of black life that was rarely visible.
The goal was twofold: to inspire and instil pride of self and community among young black people; and to help each country confront the problem of racial discrimination through greater understanding, by making the black past accessible and meaningful to the broader white community.
Educating those outside the black community was always a central focus of these celebrations. Politically, the belief was that if the country understood the contributions and sacrifices made by, for example, black people who served in the military during the second world war, it would provide a powerful argument that would undermine the notions of black inferiority in fair-minded white countrymen and women. Focusing on these contributions and sacrifices would help black people prove their worthiness as citizens. And by challenging those notions, an environment could be created that was more conducive to combating racism.
As scholars and political figures in both nations question the impact and importance of a month dedicated to one community, it is important to assess if Black History Month still matters. Or is it just an obligatory gesture that has become routine and meaningless?
For me, Black History Month should still matter; it is still the useful tool in the struggle for racial fairness that Woodson envisioned over 90 years ago. After all, no one can deny the power of inspiration as a force for change. I remember being in Pietermaritzburg in the Kwa-Zulu Natal region of South Africa attending a speech by Nelson Mandela shortly after his release from prison. He spoke passionately about how much he was inspired by African Americans such as Douglass and Martin Luther King, and how their struggles for freedom helped him believe that change was possible even in the era of apartheid.
Yet simply providing inspiration is not enough to justify the month: its purpose needs clarifying and its message needs fine tuning. The history that is shared during these months often focuses on the famous or the exceptional. Which in some ways makes it difficult for many to relate to. While we should know the lives of Harriet Tubman or Rosa Parks, we should also recognise those often left out of our narrative of celebrity; such as those who laboured in the textile mills in the north of England, or those who participated in the Bristol bus boycott. And it is essential that Black History Month in Britain should focus less on Dr King and the US civil rights movement and more on figures such as Mary Seacole and Stephen Lawrence.
It is important for the month to avoid romanticising a history that is already ripe with heroines and achievers, and to address the complexity and the ambiguity of the past. Rather than simply celebrate inventors, the month should explore the defeats as well as the disappointments, using history to educate future generations that change does not come without struggle and sacrifice – and that rarely does a lone individual, no matter how successful, change society without community support.
The challenges of celebrating Black History Month helped to shape how we created the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. It was essential that this museum revel in its blackness but also embrace its American-ness. That duality has drawn more than five million visitors since Presidents Obama and Bush opened the museum in the fall of 2016 – in a space on the National Mall, the site of the monuments and museums that define America to the world.
Undergirding all the museum believes is a quotation by a figure who deserves more attention during Black History Month and all year long, the author James Baldwin, who wrote: “It is the past that makes the present coherent.” Ultimately, the visitors to the museum come away with the knowledge that all Americans, regardless of race, are shaped in profound ways by the African American experience.
Above all else, the activities of Black History Month should be more than a celebration of one community. In the UK it should use the history of black Britons as a lens to understand what it means to be British. After all, the black community has shaped and informed aspects of identity that touch the entirely of its citizenry. In essence, the month is both an examination of a people’s journey and a nation’s story.