One hundred years of celebrating Black History
S. E. Anderson
One hundred years of celebrating Black History
Commemorating African American history is not just about studying the past. It’s about taking what is taught out into the streets, workplaces, and classrooms to shape movements.
Emily Woo Yamasaki
February 2026
This year marks the centennial of the launching of “Negro History Week (NHW)” which evolved into Black History Month, officially designated in 1976 as the month of February. But actually every month should be celebrated because Black history is American history.
Crucial institutions and services like public education and federally funded healthcare were established by formerly enslaved African Americans. Jazz and R&B music, from African roots, are endemic to American culture.
Radical historian and author Dr. Carter G. Woodson initiated NHW to highlight Black achievements, systematically overlooked by mainstream history. He chose February to commemorate the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, with whom he linked the struggle for Black freedom.
The second African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, after W.E.B. Du Bois, Dr. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now ASALH) as part of his campaign to integrate Black history into education nationally. He wrote, “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition. … It stands in danger of being exterminated.”
History is knowledge and, as Malcom X conveyed, knowledge is power. This is why the right wing is attacking Critical Race Theory and banning books by James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, among others, that uplift African Americans, criticize the police, or simply mention race. The racist bigots want to erase the very existence of Black people. And they are particularly afraid of Black socialists, feminists and unionists who dare to confront the powers that be and who are key to fundamentally changing the world.
The Black Civil Rights Movement inspired the Native American, Chicano, Asian American, modern feminist and LGBTQ+ movements, as well as liberation struggles in Africa and elsewhere. Black feminists have shaped key concepts like reproductive justice and intersectionality. Black workers are part of the backbone of labor battles against the bosses.
The resilience of African Americans through slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow can never be erased. As freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer said, “We know this country was built on the Black backs of Black people.”
Let the next 100 years be the history of the fulfillment of the Black freedom struggle — a permanent end to systemic racism and segregation, white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and economic exploitation of all. ///
s. e. anderson
author of The Black Holocaust for Beginners
www.blackeducator.org
"If WORK was good for you, the rich would leave none for the poor." (Haiti)
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