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Over the past year, scholars, historians, and activists have faced a challenging landscape in their efforts to promote the teaching of Black history in the United States.
Even though February was designated as National Black History Month last year, President Donald Trump kicked off his second term by criticizing certain African American history lessons, suggesting they aim to make people resent the nation. His administration has taken actions that undermine the representation of Black history at national parks, including the recent removal of a slavery exhibit in Philadelphia. Advocates for Black history perceive these measures as alarming and without precedent.
“States and cities are apprehensive about potential backlash from the White House,” remarked DeRay Mckesson, a veteran activist and executive director of Campaign Zero, an organization dedicated to police reform. “Even those with good intentions are opting for silence now.”
This year marks the centennial of the country’s earliest Black History Month observances, initiated by scholar Carter G. Woodson’s creation of the first Negro History Week. Despite the political climate, civil rights groups, artists, and academics are determined to involve young people in a comprehensive understanding of America’s narrative. Numerous lectures, educational events, and new literature — ranging from nonfiction to graphic novels — are being introduced to commemorate this landmark.
“That’s why we’re collaborating with over 150 teachers nationwide on a Black History Month curriculum, ensuring that young people learn about Black history in a deliberate and meaningful way,” Mckesson explained. His organization, in partnership with Afro Charities and prominent Black scholars, is spearheading a campaign to widen access to educational resources.
New graphic novel highlights history of Juneteenth
About three years ago, Angélique Roché, a journalist and adjunct professor at Xavier University of Louisiana, accepted a “once-in-a-lifetime” invitation to be the writer for a graphic novel retelling of the story of Opal Lee, “grandmother of Juneteenth.”
Lee, who will also turn 100 this year, is largely credited for getting federal recognition of the June 19 holiday commemorating the day when enslaved people in Texas learned they were emancipated. Under Trump, however, Juneteenth is no longer a free-admission day at national parks.
Juneteenth helped usher in the first generation of Black Americans who, like Woodson, was born free. “First Freedom: The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth,” the graphic novel, comes out Tuesday. It is the culmination of Roché’s assiduous archival research, phone chats and visits to Texas to see Lee and her granddaughter, Dione Sims.
“There is nothing ‘indoctrinating’ about facts that are based on primary sources that are highly researched,” said Roché, who hopes the book makes it into libraries and classrooms. “At the end of the day, what the story should actually tell people is that we’re far more alike than we are different.”
While Lee is the main character, Roché used the novel as a chance to put attention on lesser known historical figures like William “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald, Texas’ first Black millionaire, and Opal Lee’s mother, Mattie Broadous Flake.
She hopes this format will inspire young people to follow Lee and her mantra — “make yourself a committee of one.”
“It doesn’t mean don’t work with other people,” Roché said. “Don’t wait for other people to make the changes you wanna see.”
Campaign aims to train new generation of Black historians
When Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders were issued last year, Jarvis Givens, a professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard, was thousands of miles away teaching in London, where Black History Month is celebrated in October. He had already been contemplating writing a book for the centennial.
Watching Trump’s “attack” cemented the idea, Givens said.
“I wanted to kind of devote my time while on leave to writing a book that would honor the legacy that gave us Black History Month,” Givens said.
The result is “I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month,” a book with four in-depth essays that comes out Tuesday. The title is a line from the 1920s poem “The Creation” by James Weldon Johnson, whose most famous poem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” is known as the “Black National Anthem.”
Givens examines important themes in Black history and clarifies misconceptions around them.
The book and the research Givens dug up will tie into a “living history campaign” with Campaign Zero and Afro Charities, Mckesson said. The goal is to teach what Woodson believed — younger generations can become historians who can discern fact from fiction.
“When I grew up, the preservation of history was a historian’s job,” Mckesson said, adding his group’s campaign will teach young students how to record history.
How the ‘father of Black history’ might feel today
Born in 1875 to formerly enslaved parents, Woodson was among the first generation of Black Americans not assigned to bondage at birth. He grew up believing that education was a way to self-empowerment, said Robert Trent Vinson, director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The second Black man to earn a doctorate at Harvard University — W. E. B. Du Bois was the first — Woodson was disillusioned by how Black history was dismissed. He saw that the memories and culture of less educated Black people were no less valuable, Vinson said.
When Woodson established Negro History Week in 1926, he was in an era where popular stereotypes like blackface and minstrelsy were filling in for actual knowledge of the Black experience, according to Vinson. This sparked the creation of Black history clubs and Woodson began inserting historical lessons “on the sly” in publications like the “Journal of Negro History” and the “Negro History Bulletin.”
“Outside the formal school structure, they’re having a separate school like in churches or in study groups,” Vinson said. “Or they’re sharing it with parents and saying, ‘you teach your young people this history.’ So, Woodson is creating a whole educational space outside the formal university.”
In 1976, for the week’s 50th anniversary, President Gerald Ford issued a message recognizing it as an entire month. There was pushback then over the gains the Civil Rights Movement had made, Givens said.
As for today’s backlash over Black and African American studies, Vinson believes Woodson would not be surprised. But, he would see it as a sign “you’re on the right track.”
“There’s a level of what he called ‘fugitivity,’ of sharing this knowledge and being strategic about it,” Vinson said. “There are other times like in this moment, Black History Month, where you can be more out and assertive, but be strategic about how you spread the information.”
Resistance to teaching Black history is something that seems to occur every generation, Mckesson said.
“We will go back to normalcy. We’ve seen these backlashes before,” Mckesson said. “And when I think about the informal networks of Black people who have always resisted, I think that is happening today.”
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Tang reported from Phoenix.