Black History Month
By Chris Owusu-Barfi
Every year, Black History Month honors the accomplishments of African Americans and draws attention to their crucial place in American history. The celebration, also known as African American History Month, sprang from “Black History Week," an initiative by eminent African Americans Carter G. Woodson and others. Every American president since 1976 has proclaimed February to be Black History Month. The United Kingdom and Canada are two other nations that celebrate Black history for an entire month in October and February, respectively.
Origins of Black History Month
Half a century after the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in the United States, in 1915, Black History Month's history began. In September of that year, the eminent minister Jesse E. Moorland and Harvard-educated historian Carter G. Woodson established the ASNLH, a group devoted to studying and highlighting the accomplishments of Black people and other people of African descent. This group announced the second week in February as Black History Week. This week was selected because it was the same week Black communities celebrated Frederick Douglass's birthday on February 14 and Abraham Lincoln’s on February 12. This initiative led to the birth of what is now known as Black History Month.
The Theme for Black History Month 2023
Since 1976, every president of the United States has proclaimed February to be Black History Month and supported a particular theme. The Black History Month 2023 theme, “Black Resistance,” explores how "African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings," since the nation's earliest days.
Notable African American Heroes
Muhammad Ali, Mary McLeod Bethune, Elaine Brown, H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin), Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Shirley Chisholm, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Elijah Muhammad, Huey Newton, Philip Randolph, Harriet Tubman, and Malcolm X are some notable African American Heroes who did a lot to help the African American Community in the United States of America.
