Honoring Black History Month

HONORING BLACK HISTORY MONTH -- (House of Representatives - February 28, 2006)

Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, every February, Americans celebrate Black History Month. This tribute dates back to 1926 and is credited to a Harvard scholar named Carter G. Woodson. The son of former slaves, Woodson dedicated his life to ensuring that black history was accurately documented and disseminated. In an effort to bring national attention to the contributions of black Americans, Woodson organized the first annual Negro History Week in 1926. He chose the second week of February in honor of the birthdays of pivotal black supporters Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. From Jackie Robinson to Tiger Woods, Harriet Tubman to Barack Obama, Black History Month pays tribute to inspirational African Americans from the past, as well as those who will continue to make history well into the future.

For 1 month, people of African descent in America are recognized for their contributions. The irony of recognizing and paying tribute to people of African descent in America is that we are recognizing all people of the Earth. Africa represents all people of the world. Every person born since creation, every person alive today, and every person born in the future was, is, and will be of African descent. The gift Africa has provided the world is humanity and civilization.

Be that as it may, Black History has been presented and accepted as a fragmented afterthought. It is celebrated for 1 month and/or mentioned with a couple of lines in a text or Social Studies course outline. In most instances, the references begin with slavery and end with the Civil Rights Era and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A question I ask high school students is, "What were slaves before they became slaves?" Their response, 90 percent of the time, is "nothing." It appears many of our youth believe their ancestors fell out of the sky as slaves.

Black History is world history. Old and new research on Africa and its place in human history has proved that Africa is the birthplace of mankind and was, for many centuries, in the forefront of human progress. African or Black History must be looked at anew and seen in its relationship to world history as only the history of the first and second rise of Europe. Yet, the history of Africa was already old when Europe was born. Until quite recently, it was rather generally assumed, even among well-educated persons in the West, that the continent of Africa was a great expanse of land, mostly jungle, inhabited by savages and fierce beasts. It was not realized that great civilizations could have existed there, or that great kings could have ruled there in might and wisdom over vast empires. Today, many of us, as the descendants of queens and kings of Africa, refuse to identify with the Motherland of all people. We begin with 1619 and slavery. We identify with 370 years of physical and mental bondage as opposed to three thousands years of uninterrupted civilizations. Our story is everyone's story. Our story begins with the worshipping of one God, builders of the pyramids, and builders of the first cities and universities.

To reverse our fall from being builders of pyramids to project dwellers; to reverse our fall from being controllers of our own destiny to caretakers of someone else's destiny; and to reverse our unraveling as a whole people will necessitate knowing who we are and what we represent. Our future as a people, community, and world is related to the past. Back to the future--Black History not for a month, but for a lifetime!

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