Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Black History Month was signed into law in 1986 but that wasn’t the first time it had been proposed. It was Carter G. Woodson, the “father of Black history,” who first set out in 1926 to designate a time to promote and educate people about Black history and culture, according to W. Marvin Dulaney. Black educators and Black United Students at Kent State University first proposed Black History Month in February 1969. The first celebration of Black History Month took place at Kent State a year later, from January 2 to February 28, 1970.

It’s a sad state of our national prejudice that although the idea was presented in 1926 and the first time it was celebrated on a local scale was 1970 but it took another 16 years for Black History Month to be adopted into federal law. Now in the state of Florida their Governor Ron DeSantis  wants to ban the practice and has effectively removed any black studies classes from K-12 schools and is actively trying to remove the curriculum from college campuses. The lily white  (Italian decent) DeSantis criticizes the teaching of Black History, labeled by the right as CRT, as just making white children feel bad about themselves.

God forbid little Jaylin knew the real history of how others were treated in the past. The first black children to be integrated into public schools in the 1960’s had to be escorted by federal police and were still threatened by white adults. It would be terrible if children today knew that their grandparent were violently racist.

There are members of our federal government that vehemently oppose the removal of confederate statues from town square decrying that we want to remove history. Most play ignorant to the fact that those monuments were not erected until the 1950’s specifically to assert white power to the black communities they were erected in. Even Robert E. Lee argued against creating Confederate war monuments on battlefields, which would “keep open the sores of war.” Our favorite dirt ball MTG said that if she were black, which she is not, she would be proud to see these statues and reminisce how far black people have come. To me that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

I lived in Germany and they do not fly the Nazi banner or have statues for Adolf Hitler to remind them of how far they have come since WWII, but we still have places the fly the flag of the confederacy that waged war against it own and lost. My question is why we allow it.

Collin Kaepernick kneeled to bring attention to bring attention to unjust police practice against minorities and he was summarily chastised and drummed out of the NFL. MTG called for a National Divorce on the floor of the House of Representatives and “crickets”, an elected member of our federal government is calling for it dissolution and that doesn’t hold our attention for more than one new cycle.

Our nations history has had in moment of glory but also its ugly beginnings. No one can claim that we started out with all men created equal, it didn’t work that way. The slave states had the 3/5 clause added into the constitution because they wanted the representation of population in the government. The only people that could vote in the beginning were white land owners and that was it. That all seems equal right. When Lincoln freed the slaves the black population still didn’t have any rights, maybe it would have been different if he hadn’t been assassinated but we will never know.

Black history is part of our national history and should not be painted over just because its truth offends some. The best line I have been told is if you are offended by History good, we are supposed to learn for history, not be entertained by it.