Reclaiming the Black Past. Pero G. Dagbovie
for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) was at the forefront of a movement to transform this weeklong celebration in February into a monthlong tribute. “In celebrating Black History Month,” Gerald Ford remarked in the first presidential observance on February 10, 1976, “we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” A decade later, the United States Congress passed Public Law 99-244 (1986), designating the month of February as being National Black (Afro-American) History Month. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the celebration was renamed National African American History Month.
Most often called Black History Month (National African American History Month is a mouthful and comes across as being unduly formal and even portentous), today this annual commemoration constitutes a firmly established custom and institution in American life, especially among African Americans. During the twenty-first century, however, debates about the meaning and intention of this observance have proliferated. Countless people—journalists, political pundits, public intellectuals, educators, activists, and scholars—have wrangled over Black History Month’s role in American life, even contemplating whether it is still necessary and of value. As historian Daryl Scott, former president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, remarked in 2014, thrashing out Black History Month’s contemporary relevance and standing within American culture “is a cottage industry.”3
On the eve of Black History Month 2016, a reporter for MSNBC covering the most recent chitchat about its observance in social media outlets contended that “the debate around Black History Month really began in earnest 10 years ago” when Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman publicly raised objections to the celebration.4 Though Freeman’s comments undoubtedly reignited “the Black History Month debate,” the contemporary war of words about this popular custom are not recent, avant-garde, or cutting-edge: such concerns have been looming in the minds of and articulated by a medley of thinkers for more than seventy years. In actuality, much of what is now being conjured up about Black History Month was present in the discussions of Woodson and his colleagues in the early years when Negro History Week was practiced.
Using provocative and in some cases quite entertaining discussions of Black History Month as instructive and engaging points of departure, this chapter opens by exploring how this observance has recently been reconceptualized by a group of citizen journalists. To illustrate that contemporary and widely publicized diatribes against Black History Month are reminiscent of past grumblings, I historicize twenty-first century debates and controversies surrounding this established celebration. I also unpack President Obama’s ritualistic commemorations of the black past, recent “Black Future(s) Month” activities, and the paucity of scholarship on Black History Month. In conclusion, I consider Black History Month’s unresolved future.
FEBRUARY 20l6: A BLACK HISTORY MONTH TO REMEMBER?
By the middle of February 2016, many in the social media world were declaring that the 40th National African American History Month was the “best,” “greatest,” and “blackest” manifestation of this commemoration that the world had ever seen. One of the first bloggers to trumpet this conviction was Damon Young, co-founder of the popular daily digital magazine VSB (verysmartbrothers.com). In its own right, the title of his February 16, 2016, blog is alluring: “Kendrick Confirms It: February 2016 is the Blackest Black History Month Ever.” For Young, Beyoncé’s controversial half-time performance at Super Bowl 50 (one of the most watched programs in the history of the US television industry), Kendrick Lamar’s success and Brittany Howard’s closing performance at the 58th annual Grammy Awards, and Obama’s opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court Justice confirmed that “February 2016 is the blackest Black History Month ever.”
Throughout February 2016 and into March, countless bloggers—from unknown, amateur, personal bloggers to insightful public intellectuals—cosigned on Young’s observations, adding other events, black accomplishments, and symbolic triumphs to the mix. Some developed interesting and sometimes humorous lists justifying why February 2016 was a historic month for black America in blogs bearing titles like “5 Reasons This Has Been the Most Unapologetically Black Black History Month Ever,” “9 Reasons February 2016 Is the Blackest Black History Month Ever,” and even “29 Reasons This Was the Blackest Black History Month Ever.” When placed within the broader scope of African American history and the enduring black freedom struggle, most of the “reasons” that graced bloggers’ inventories were insignificant: Stephen Curry’s brilliance on the basketball court or Cam Newton’s swagger, the “Blackish” episode on police brutality, Kanye West’s announcement of his ingenious “The Life of Pablo” album, Morgan Freeman’s voice being used by the WAZE navigation app, the introduction of a black “American Girl” doll from the civil rights era, the release of several PBS-style black history documentaries, and so on.
CNN Digital joined the fray on the last day of the month. In an essay “From Beyoncé to Chris Rock: Best Black History Month Ever?” one multimedia journalist summarized what other bloggers before her concluded: “Even if we did not reach the absolute pinnacle of Black History Month, it’s been pretty memorable.”5
Why was there so much media attention and hype related to black America during the 2016 Black History Month commemorations? If we were to revisit past commemorations, we could certainly identify equally important achievements and landmark moments. As strange as it might sound, one of the reasons that the 2016 #BlackHistoryMonth movement deemed the 40th anniversary of this annual observance the “best,” “greatest,” and “blackest” Black History Month ever was arguably the byproduct of Beyoncé’s popularity in African American and US culture. Her and her crew’s superficial nods to the Black Panther Party during the Super Bowl half-time celebration evidently upset some of the older white viewers who were probably expecting an apolitical performance from this crossover megastar. On the other hand, younger African Americans, especially personal bloggers and public intellectuals in training, praised Beyoncé’s actions as forthrightly challenging the white power structure by unapologetically vindicating dimensions of black womanhood and, most explicitly, honoring the Black Panther Party, one of the most militant organizations in the modern black freedom struggle.
Of course, Beyoncé is not the only hip-hop generation icon to exalt Black Power–era activism. There exists an identifiable tradition of Black Panther Party revivalism in hip-hop culture dating back to the “golden age” of hip-hop and earlier. Public Enemy, KRS-One, Paris, Nas, Lil’ Kim, Dead Prez, Jay-Z, and Kanye West (just to name a handful) have all revered the Panthers in their lyrics and self-styling. Beyoncé was building upon hip-hop artists’ proclivity to salute the Panther’s “revolutionary” disposition. Yet, her status in US popular culture garnered much more attention for her nod to the Panthers than any of the acknowledgments of her predecessors. As feminist scholar bell hooks suggests in her tendentious critique of Beyoncé’s Lemonade album, “Beyoncé’s audience is the world and that world of business and money-making has no color.”6
Was February 2016 really such a historic Black History Month? Assuredly, previous generations of African Americans could have compelling reasons for claiming that the Black History Month commemorations and achievements of their times were equally if not more important.
For instance, in February 1977, businessman and civil rights activist Vernon E. Jordan Jr. announced to readers of the New Pittsburgh Courier: “There’s a degree of excitement about this year’s observation of Black History Month missing from previous ones.”7 For Jordan, Blacks were poised to make economic advancements, “regional unity” was on the rise, Martin Luther King Sr. had just delivered a memorable sermon at the Lincoln Memorial, and the television miniseries Roots premiered on ABC. A decade later in a write-up entitled “This Black History Month Is Different from Others,” editors of the Atlanta Daily World blazoned: “As we enter into 1987 Black History Month we hope the readers of your Daily World will take a broader view of the situation in the universe than ever before.” They continued, “This is a time in history that mankind hangs in the balance … This hour in history confronts mankind with the most decisive test in history.”8