Black History Month amidst voting rights struggles

by Renwick Rose

Black people in the USA have begun their annual celebration of Black History Month, commemorated in the month of February in the USA and Canada. In the United Kingdom, October is the month of commemoration.

The idea of this month during which people of African origin commemorate their many struggles and historic achievements is credited to a famous Black educator, Dr. Carter Woodson. He is said to be inspired after attending a national celebration in 1915 to mark emancipation from slavery from which he pledged to do more to teach young African- Americans more of their heritage and achievements of their ancestors.

The organization he founded, the Association for the Study of Negro life and History, began with a Negro History Week in 1926. He chose February because it was the birth month of two Americans both associated with the emancipation of slaves in the USA, President Abraham Lincoln and the former slave and titan of black struggles, Frederick Douglass.

Such was the success of the venture that not only did it spread throughout the USA but it also expanded until by the fifties it was being observed over the whole month. The rise of the Black Power movement in the sixties gave further impetus and the idea reached the Caribbean and many other countries where black people were being oppressed.

Those who either do not understand or who are afraid of the ideas of black emancipation, wrongly accuse those in the Caribbean who commemorate Black History Month as being “copycats”. Yet it is they, in most aspects of life who worship white heroes and uphold events detrimental to black freedom.

In the USA this year, Black History Month comes at a time when millions of black people are being deprived of their voting rights in many states. It is being used therefore as a mobilizing tool to organize black people to fight for the rights as taught by Dr Woodson and the immortal Frederick Douglass.