How to celebrate black history month 12 months of the year

Ebony, Feb, 1995

BLACK History Month is a one-month-a-year festival of lectures, exhibits, historical films and community activities that celebrate the great story of the survival and continuing creativity of African-Americans. But when the month ends, the cultural festival often ends and Black history seems to disappear for another 11 months.

Black historians say that it doesn't have to be that way. Many share Dr. John Hope Franklin's desire to see parents, teachers and the media concentrate more of their efforts on making the celebration of Black history a 12-month affair. "There is no reason why it should not be celebrated at other times besides February," says Dr. Franklin, James B. Duke professor of history emeritus at Duke University. "My great crusade is to deemphasize February and to emphasize March and April and May and on around to January."

Spreading out the study of Black history over the year is easy enough to do, says Dr. Franklin, by engaging each month in one or more of the activities normally reserved for February.

Parents should consider the large number of Black historical sites around the country when planning family vacations, historians say. Why not visit the birthplace of Frederick Douglass, some of the stations on the Underground Railroad traveled by Harriet Tubman, or the monuments erected in honor of fallen Civil Rights activists?

Every home library, Black scholars say, should include Black literary classics such as W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk and Carter G. Woodson's The Negro In Our History. And when children are assigned book reports and other school-related homework, parents can suggest the study of African-American heroes and heroines like sports legend Joe Louis, literary pioneer Zora Neale Hurston, or the first Black to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, to name only a few.

Historians also advise parents to give their children a sense of personal tradition by talking to them about their own family history. Who were their ancestors? What part of the country did their family come from? "Many young people don't have a sense of an African-American tradition," says Dr. Robert L. Harris Jr., associate professor of African-American history in the Africana Studies and Research Center of Cornell University. "And if history becomes real for them 12 months of the year, maybe they will begin to get a better sense of tradition."

Time and again, Black historians emphasize the need to help children understand that the past not only affects the present but also the future in which they will raise their own children. "I am really concerned about what will happen by the year 2000," says Dr. Bettye J. Gardner, president-elect of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History. "We need today's young people to understand, just as previous generations have understood, that while things may be difficult or they may not be the way you want them to be, understanding the past provides hope for the future."

Teachers can emphasize this point by developing curricula that incorporate the study of Blacks into daily lesson plans. Science lectures can include the contributions of African-Americans such as Dr. Charles Drew to the establishment of America as a technological giant. Literary discussions are opportunities to spotlight the works of Blacks such as Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison. And, of course, children can be exposed to all the Black men and women who have, for decades, excelled in the fields of music, art and sports.

Teachers need not limit their instruction to the contributions of people of African descent living in this country, says Dr. Darlene Clark Hine, John A. Hannah professor of history at Michigan State University. "The Black experience is global now and it need not be confined to the United States," she says. "If teachers want to expand their students' horizons, they can introduce them to the total Black Diaspora by focusing on the different cultures and the different experiences of Black people throughout the Western hemisphere as well as in Africa."

Global events such as South Africa's first democratic, free election are often captured on mainstream television. But more often than not, Black history programs are virtually invisible beyond the month of February. While Blacks must continue to insist that the television, print and film industries become more accountable to Black America, Dr. Clark Hine does not believe in passively waiting until the media's Black history offerings become more plentiful.

She advises parents and teachers to take matters into their own hands. "Every family has a VCR now, so there is no excuse for parents not to develop a Black history film library right in their homes," she says. "So your child doesn't want to read a book? Make him or her look at one of these films and tell you what's going on while you're preparing dinner."

Historians and the leaders of historical organizations also say that ordinary citizens, Black and White, ought to get involved in the continuing struggle to make sure that the Black founders of this country are properly memorialized in the living history of the Republic--museums, street names, and the names of public buildings.