Thursday – 28 February 2019
This year, I opted not to do a month-long Black History Month series of posts. I did a post on February 1st on Facebook, but I think that last year’s run of Black Panther posts – while fun – may have burned me out a little.

I was going through old blog posts and wound up stumbling upon part of an entry from nine years ago – nine years ago today, in fact – that I thought bore being brought to light once more:

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month

Today is the last day of February and, as such, the last day of Black History Month in the United States and Canada. Of all the things that we’ve looked at over the past twenty-seven days, one question has not been asked: “Why do we have a Black History Month?”

The remembrance was founded in 1926 by United States historian Carter G. Woodson as “Negro History Week”. Woodson chose the second week of February because it marked the birthdays of two Americans who greatly influenced the lives and social condition of African Americans: former President Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

The celebration was expanded to a month in 1976, the nation’s bicentennial. President Gerald R. Ford urged Americans to seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.

While I believe that it is good to set aside time to recognize the achievements and pitfalls of the past, we still have “…miles to go before [we] sleep.” Black history – and any ethnic group’s history, for that matter – shouldn’t be relegated to just one month of the year. In the same way that America was known as a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, our history is an amalgamation of those peoples’ struggles and stories. These are things that should be studied and celebrated throughout the year, as a common history of the people of the United States of America.

Quite frankly, that seems like the perfect coda for this month.