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HISTORY AND CULTURE
Black History Month Is We, the People’s Month
Trump can’t stop the bum rush and the truth of history
A friend of mine wrote the following recently:
Amen, I said.
On a certain level, though, I appreciate America acknowledging my history and culture that I have proudly embraced and practiced and loved for a long time, I am fine either way. If you want to vote in a divisive, bigoted, hateful leader of this place who wants to flush Black History Month, you go on. But, we, as we always have, will continue to survive, thrive, and celebrate the “we.”
Black History Month is every day for us Black Americans anyway. We live it. We don’t need America to live it. I welcome anyone, any American, any decent, thoughtful human being, to celebrate with us. I try to do my part to celebrate America's diversity and the complex ethnic, racial, sexual, social, political, and cultural history of the country where I was born. And I reject everything about Trump’s agenda to dismiss and diminish what America is, in truth.
We know the half story of Black History Month. Carter G. Woodson, the esteemed historian, and author of The Miseducation of the Negro, got the ball rolling decades ago when he declared “Negro History Week.” This had nothing…
