The Need and Good of Black History Month
The following article is by Allen B. Ballard, professor of history and Africana studies. His first novel, Carried By Six, about a working-class family�s struggle with drug dealers in their Harlem housing project, will be published this coming spring. This article is published with the permission of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, where it appears in the Winter 1997/1998 edition.
Allen Ballard
Black History Month will always be associated in my mind with Miss Nelly Bright, principal of the Joseph E. Hill School, the segregated elementary school in Philadelphia that I attended as a child in the 1930s. Throughout the year, the halls and classrooms of that school were decorated with pictures of such notables as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Alexander Dumas, and each of our weekly school assemblies began with the singing of the Negro National Anthem. But to Nelly Bright, Negro History Week, its name then, was something special. It was a time for skits about the Underground Railroad, poetry readings of the works of Paul Laurence Dunbar, art contests for the best Negro History poster, and a special chorus to sing such spirituals as "Walk Together Children," or "Steal Away."
The week was always climaxed by the appearance of a famous local black person � I remember so well the time that Marian Anderson came and sang and then bent down to sweep a bunch of us little children into her arms. When Nelly Bright finished with her kind of celebration, we really knew that we were important people, that great things were expected of us, and that we had a tradition of honor, excellence, and perseverance to uphold. That meant a lot to us as we daily walked by the spanking brand-new white school with its high wire fences on our way to the Hill school three blocks past it. The purpose of Negro History Week was clear � to give us an intellectual and emotional anchor in the midst of overt racism, legal segregation, and the attendant myths of white superiority.
If anything, the need for such a program is even more evident today than it was in my childhood. Television � both black - and white-sponsored � literally suffuses the American public with negative images of black people. At the very least, the celebration of Black History Month presents the opportunity for countering this perception. Certainly, its implementation leaves much to be desired � indeed, from what has been appearing on television in the past years, it wouldn�t be surprising if they were soon playing reruns of Amos �n� Andy or The Birth of a Nation to fill their obligatory time spots. Despite these and other flaws � the predictable, frequently hackneyed and ill-prepared talks on the academic circuit, the very slow movement by professors in some traditional disciplines to incorporate African-American history into their syllabi, the apartheid-like assumption that the other 11 months of the year can be devoted to white history � Black History Month still serves good purposes.
First, it gives teachers on all levels of the educational ladder an opportunity to focus on the place of African Americans in this country�s history. Some teachers might be incapable of doing this, and others simply might not want to do so � but at least the existence of the celebratory month stirs some kind of thought about black history amongst them. Second, in black churches and black social organizations throughout the country, this month is often used as a special time to inculcate black youth with the greatness of the heritage that is theirs. In church after church, children stand up before the congregation and give reports on African-American history or read poems as we once did. In addition, there must be literally thousands of essay-writing contests going on across the country in schools � black and white � about black history. Something good must be happening as a result of that. Third, one month a year might not be very much in the scheme of things, but it does mean that grudgingly or not much of the country must face up to the fact that black people do indeed have a history that is part and parcel of American history.
A few months back I stood on the bare parking lot where once the Hill school stood. I stood motionless, as if nailed to the spot where the entrance to the school once was. I wept quietly as memories of classmates and teachers, all long gone, flooded my soul. A feeling of strength, renewal, and rededication went through me as I thought of them.
And on dear, loving Miss Nelly Bright: "Be proud of who you are, children � your people have done great things."
No, there�s no need to eliminate Black History Month, just a need to refocus on why it was created in the first place.
