"Black History Month is in the shortest month of the year, and the coldest," comedian Chris Rock said in 2015. "Just in case we want to have a parade."
Although at least February has an extra day this year, it's true that Black History Month is celebrated on the shortest month in the calendar year. But it grew out of a week created nearly 100 years ago to honor two of the most important people in the history of Black emancipation in the United States.
Who is the founder of Black History Month?
Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, a sharecropper and the son of formerly enslaved and illiterate Virginia parents, was a self-made man. He taught himself enough to start high school at the age of 20 and quickly went on to earn a bachelor's degree in literature from Brea College and a master's degree from the University of Chicago. Woodson became the second Black American (after W. E. B. Du Bois) to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard University and joined the faculty there, eventually becoming Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Woodson saw from experience that African American history was being "overlooked, ignored or suppressed." White institutions and textbooks seemed to have little to no interest in including any Black history curriculums, he said, and he devoted much of his life to encouraging Black Americans to learn more about their own heritage and accomplishments.
After seeing thousands of people lining up in 1915 to see a Black history display at a national anniversary of emancipation, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later renamed the Association for the Study of African American History (ASALH). The next year he founded The Journal of Negro History to publish scholarly articles and book reviews on the African American experience. The journal is still going strong today as The Journal of African American History.
"If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated," Woodson said.
Woodson died of a heart attack at the age of 74 in 1950. Two schools in Florida are named for him: Carter G. Woodson Elementary School in Jacksonville and Dr. Carter G. Woodson PK-8 in Tampa.
Why did Black History Month start?
It started as a week.
Woodson had urged his Omega Psi Phi fraternity brothers to promote Black achievements, according to an essay by Daryl Michael Scott, a Howard University history professor and former ASALH national president, and in 1924 they created the Negro Achievement Week.
But Woodson wanted to go bigger. And instead of creating a new celebration, Woodson expanded on an existing tradition.
He established Negro History Week in February 1926 to coincide with days that Black Americans already were celebrating. Black communities had been commemorating the birthdays of "two great Americans who played a prominent role in shaping Black history" for decades, Scott said: President Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass (Feb. 14). With the help of Black newspapers and civic leaders he promoted the week to add Black history to the traditional celebrations.
"He envisioned the study and celebration of the Negro as a race, not simply as the producers of a great man," Scott said. "And Lincoln, however great, had not freed the slaves — the Union Army, including hundreds of thousands of Black soldiers and sailors, had done that. Rather than focusing on two men, the Black community, he believed, should focus on the countless Black men and women who had contributed to the advance of human civilization."
Black History Week caught on and took off. The demand for Black literature and culture rapidly grew in the 1920s and 30s and classrooms across the country demanded Black history curriculums. Woodson continued to promote celebrations but pushed schools to teach Black history all year and use the week to demonstrate what students had learned.
"He spoke of a shift from Negro History Week to Negro History Year," Scott said.
When did Black History Month begin?
Some people in West Virginia expanded the celebration to the whole month as early as the 1940s, and others in Chicago followed in the 60s. Interest grew nationwide during the civil rights era as Black college students were becoming more conscious of their links with Africa, Scott said.
In 1976, on the 50th anniversary of the first Negro History Week, ASALH changed it to Black History Month.
How to celebrate Black History Month 2024
"The history of the United States is certainly taught and conveyed all year long, but its greatest symbolic celebration occurs on one day, the Fourth of July," Scott said. "Black History Month, too, is a powerful symbolic celebration. And symbols always stand for something bigger — in our case, the important role of Black History in pursuit of racial justice and equality."
Black History Month is a time for everyone to celebrate and learn more about Black history and the achievements of Black Americans. Schools from K-12 to universities devote time for all students to study Black history studies, essays, presentations, songs, documentaries and more, and there are multiple public events and festivals.
What is this year’s Black History Month theme?
The theme of this year's Black History Month is "African Americans and the Arts."
Is Black History Month a federal or legal holiday?
No. But every U.S. president since Gerald Ford has issued a statement honoring the spirit of Black History Month and in 1986 the U.S. Congress designated the month of February as "Black History Month."
Ford honored Black History Week in 1975, calling the recognition "a healthy awareness on the part of all of us of achievements that have too long been obscured and unsung." He issued the first Black History Month commemoration the next year, saying. "we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."
Last year President Joe Biden issued a proclamation saying, "During National Black History Month, we celebrate the legacy of Black Americans whose power to lead, to overcome, and to expand the meaning and practice of American democracy has helped our Nation become a more fair and just society. This country was established upon the profound but simple idea that all people are created equal and should be treated equally throughout their lives.
"It is an idea America has never fully lived up to," he said, "but it is an idea we have never fully walked away from either. The struggles and challenges of the Black American story to make a way out of no way have been the crucible where our resolve to fulfill this vision has most often been tested. Black Americans’ struggles for freedom, equal treatment, and the right to vote; for equal opportunities in education, housing, and the workplace; for economic opportunity, equal justice, and political representation; and so much more have reformed our democracy far beyond its founding.
"Black Americans have made a way not only for themselves but also have helped build a highway for millions of women, immigrants, other historically marginalized communities, and all Americans to more fully experience the benefits of our society."
