From Negro History Week to Black History Month

Al-Tony Gilmore (1946-), former professor of history and director of the University of Maryland, College Park Afro-American Studies Program speaks to the origins: “It was a real good experience. Howard had a different perspective. Howard had always been the capstone of black education, as they saw it. They always had the best faculty members, they had always had the better resources. They had also had, because of segregation and other reasons, a better crop of students. So, it was a great place. When we were writing history at Howard University, all of our commitment was to a group that was known as the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History [Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History], the group founded by Carter G. Woodson in 1916 and eventually became Black History Month in the 1920s. And the core of scholarly pursuit of African American history probably started, not with W. [E.] B. DuBois--because W. [E.] B. DuBois actually did a major study at [Clark] Atlanta University [Atlanta, Georgia] on Negro Life, as they called it then. But the Journal of Negro History was a systematic, scholarly approach to recording the black experience, and to a lesser extent, the popularizing of the Negro History Bulletin, which was the companion piece that went out to public schools. And with the Black History Month--the Black History Week movement--that became Black History Month in the 1970s. Black History had taken on a different tone.”[1] Florence Farley (1928 - 2022) who was the first woman to be elected to a city council seat in Petersburg, Virginia highlights: “Negro History Week [Black History Month] in Roanoke [Virginia] was a big week at that high school, Lucy Addison High School [Roanoke, Virginia]. They had programs all during the week, and your parents, people--everybody came to that for a twelve o'clock session. So you'd have speakers in and all, and I remember that my mother [Neoda Ware Saunders] would come over. And it was a little candy store on the corner, and they would buy homemade candy, make homemade candy, and they would buy this homemade candy. And so at night we would have during Negro History Week, we had the candy from the candy store for our dessert. And I used to just--all--as far as I was concerned, all that was sweet (laughter) just sweet times and sweet candy and all of that stuff. So it was just a very warm, pleasant kind of experience for us with that.”[2] Charles F. Harris (1934 - 2015) who was the founder of Amistad Press. notes: “On special days, like if we had, at that time we had Negro History Week [Black History Month] which was very strong in, in our community. Because you know Carter [G.] Woodson came from Virginia. And because the school system was segregated, I don't think that the white supervisors may not have known. We had The Negro History Bulletin which was like eight and half by eleven and it, it was like four sheets, and it would have quizzes in it. It would have you know it would have probably the teacher had lessons that she could give, but it had you know the famous inventors, or, or military people or things, things that you see people studying now we had that in our schools. It wasn't nationwide but we had it in our schools, and we read this right along with Junior Scholastic. And so we even had devotionals for in the morning, somebody said a Bible verse or something like, but you can't have that in school now. Or recite the Lord's Prayer or something like that, they were doing that, that was the South and nobody thought anything about it. Because I guess it was a much more homogeneous environment from the standpoint of culture and race. So what that did was it gave us, I think it gave, I know it gave me a different perspective, but like the barbershop and like my home. There were certain things that we were taught that was said the textbook is wrong. And we had such faith in what my father [Ambrose E. Harris, Sr.] would tell us what we believed what he said. And as it turned out he was right, I mean these things are now in the textbook. A lot of them are and this only comes about after the civil rights, during the Civil Rights Movement. But our perspective was always different.”[3] Francis Ward  (1935-), a professor of journalism at Syracuse University emphasized: “And I also recall taking part oh, in one year or another, in the pageants we had every year that we called Negro History Month pageants or Negro History Week [Black History Month]… Negro History Week was, of course, we celebrated by doing little skits based on the life of Joe Louis or George Washington Carver or, let me see who else, [Reverend Dr.] Martin Luther King [Jr.], of course, you know, he wasn't around at the time, so it was Joe Louis, George Washington Carver, Marian Anderson, and I think Harriet Tubman. And I--I don't remember anybody whom, whom I impersonated, but it might've been George Washington Carver, but I don't know. But I do remember some of the elementary school kids, you know, would wear a little costume and, you know, impersonate the life and that was our first understanding of these, you know, Black History Month figures; of course, at that time, we called it Negro History Week and not Black History Month the way we do now.” [4] Joyce Moore Gray  (1943 - ) who was the first African American principal in the history of the State of Utah shares: “Nope, no black history when I was growing up… Negro history week for us was all the time… because we were, you know, we would--there, there were no other kids, there were no other kids of color but black kids at our school that I recall, and definitely no white kids at our school. We--I didn't realize that there was a major difference between what, what was going on at my school, and what was going on at other schools until I was older. And then, I realized that our schools were the schools that were always getting the books that were beaten up, you know. We didn't have the swimming pool. We didn't know that the other schools did have swimming pools, so we thought it was okay the way, you know, things were going at our school. When we played, when the football teams played rival teams, they played other black schools in that area. When we traveled, we traveled to black schools. When we would do a road trip, it was to black schools.”[5]

Robert C. Hayden (1937 - 2022), who was the former project director for the Educational Development Center and served as the executive assistant to the superintendent of Boston Public Schools adds: “But I went out, and I kept going to the meetings [Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH)] every year. I'd get the books. I'd get The Journal of Negro History, I met Charles [H.] Wesley. I met [HistoryMaker] John Hope Franklin. I met Rayford [W.] Logan, Lorenzo Greene, Ewart Guinier, and these guys took an interest in me. They knew I was a back--what I call some, backdoor historian. They knew I was a backdoor historian. But they encouraged me. They had seen my work. And they encouraged me to keep on going. And so I've been to the associated meeting every year since 1970. Well, that helped me with my METCO [Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Boston, Massachusetts] work, 'cause I had resources, materials. I knew what was going on in black studies, particularly at the high school level, through the Association. As you know, the Association started Black History Month, Negro History Week in 1927. It's the Association that puts out, still, every year the Black History Month kit. So I bought the kits back. I made the suburban school system [Boston, Massachusetts] buy the kits and get the teachers to use those kits. So that was my reason for going to the Association. But that's where I learned my history. That was my doctoral work in history. I am still a member of the Association. And today I am the national secretary of the Association--African American Life and History. I've been for the last six or eight years. Got on the board in the '80s [1980s], and I founded a branch of the Association here on Martha's Vineyard [Massachusetts].” [6]

Jack Arnett Kirkland  (1931 - ) who founded the Economic Development Concentration at Washington University’s School of Social Work. shares: “Even today for instance if you are with, with the given of Black History Month which we obviously know is is not only a short month, but it, it, it glorifies you know like Booker T. [Booker T. Washington] or W.B. Du Bois [W.E.B Du Bois]. Now occasionally a Malcolm [Malcolm X] or, or some other characters are put in there but the, the real truth of what happened in the whole black and African struggle and the whole African heritage, that story still isn't told. So not only is it not told but after you've learned whatever it is that you're to learn in that one month, it's not tested. And, and kids know that if there's no test, it's not important. So it would get back then back to why black studies and my intent or my hope was that once you glean out the information in the literature and the history or the sciences and, and you're able to lift it up and you're able to put a face on it and the face obviously is black in many, many instances, then then once you have put all of that together, why could you not transpose that into the curriculum? That would be the natural logical thing “ [7]

Desiree Rogers (1959 - ), who was the chief executive officer of Johnson Publishing Company shares: “I recall working on, during Black History Month, working on--I said, "Why don't we have a, you know, black history display?" And I remember working on--they said, "Well, you can do that." Working on it myself, and putting that together, because in my sophomore year in high school, I became very militant. I got, grew my big Afro. I had my big earrings on. I had, you know, I was the [HistoryMaker] Angela Davis of my high school. You know, read--I read all the H. Rap Brown [Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin]; the Angela Davis story; the Soledad brothers, I mean prison [Soledad State Prison; Correctional Training Facility, Soledad, California]. You know, I read, I was reading all of that, you know, black literature, say, in my sophomore year. And, you know, just kind of feeling my oats as, you know, black is beautiful. And, you know, all of the black pride, especially in this environment that was all white. So, we got to have some- something, some black, red, and green around here, you know. And they said, "Sure, then you do it." And so, I did it. So, you know, and then by my senior year, I'd gotten rid of the Afro, and I was, you know, a little calmer.”[8] E. R. Shipp (1955-), a New York Daily News journalist. adds: “I was going to give a graduation speech. And Mrs. Archer [a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy] was one of the advisors to the seniors. But because she knew I was experienced at giving speeches--I'd entered many oratorical contests and won. And that's how I got a lot of money for college, by the way. So she knew I knew that kind of thing. And Mrs. Archer didn't look at my speech that I was giving. And I essentially gave a speech at--this would have been in the spring of 1972, yeah, spring of '72' [1972], I basically gave a speech that was "I'm Black and I'm Proud." And that was considered revolutionary (laughter) back then. It was not well received…. So, I gave this speech, and they didn't know how to take it. They thought I was being a militant. And for many years, students were not allowed to give graduation speeches anymore. They could come up and thank their parents. Somebody would give a "thank you to the parents" thing, and they could introduce the speaker, who was a grown up, but they didn't have kids giving graduation speeches for a while. Some years later when I was invited to come to Rockdale High [Rockdale High School in Georgia] to be a speaker for Black History Month, I essentially dusted off my graduation speech, updated it, of course, but it was the same speech essentially. And they loved it. But it was, of course, 20 years later. But back in 1972, first of all, being--it was controversial for them to have allowed me to speak anyway 'cause they hadn't had a black person speak before in graduation at Rockdale High. But then for me to talk about being black and proud was a bit much for them.” [9]

Notes:

[1] Al-Tony Gilmore (The HistoryMakers A2003.275), interviewed by Larry Crowe, November 21, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 5, story 1, Al-Tony Gilmore describes his students and the faculty at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

[2] Florence Farley (The HistoryMakers A2012.019), interviewed by Larry Crowe, February 10, 2012, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 2, Florence Farley talks about Negro History Week at Lucy Addison High School

[3] Charles F. Harris (The HistoryMakers A2005.132), interviewed by Shawn Wilson, July 28, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 2, story 9, Charles F. Harris recalls special programs at Mount Hermon School in Portsmouth, Virginia

[4[ Francis Ward (The HistoryMakers A2004.166), interviewed by Larry Crowe, September 17, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 10, Francis Ward describes his earliest childhood memory

[5] Joyce Moore Gray (The HistoryMakers A2008.046), interviewed by Larry Crowe, March 13, 2008, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 10, Joyce Moore Gray talks about the segregated school system in Chesapeake, Virginia

[6] Robert C. Hayden (The HistoryMakers A2004.130), interviewed by Larry Crowe, August 17, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 7, Robert C. Hayden talks about his membership in the Association for the Study of African American Life & History, pt. 2

[7] Jack Arnett Kirkland (The HistoryMakers A2007.288), interviewed by Larry Crowe, December 6, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 6, story 8, Jack Arnett Kirkland talks about Black History Month

[8] Desiree Rogers (The HistoryMakers A2007.169), interviewed by Larry Crowe, April 27, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 6, Desiree Rogers describes her early interest in African American history

[9] E. R. Shipp (The HistoryMakers A2013.204), interviewed by Larry Crowe, July 27, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 8, E.R. Shipp talks about her controversial high school graduation speech