This year marks the 100th Anniversary of Black History Month! At 爱神传媒, we celebrate this historic milestone during our chapel services by listening attentively to one of our SGA leaders as he or she highlights a historic African American figure who paved the way for equality and justice, creating greater space for informed dialogue on the laments and laudations of African Americans from the first day until now.
Black History Month invites all Americans to sit around the historical campfire and be warmed by the flames of African American achievement. For Christians, when these flames are properly understood in view of God鈥檚 providence and grace, we listen to one another鈥檚 story of pain and promise without contempt.
In the spirit of the African American historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), who founded Black History Month, students of African American history learn to view the world through the lens of black oppression and black opportunity. They are given cultural hermeneutic tools to exchange the oft-repeated story of black inferiority for a new perspective that highlights black dignity and social uplift. Stories of black achievement are often divorced from U.S. history books, continuing the myth that African peoples have only burdened rather than bolstered American greatness.
Woodson, author of the perennial best-seller 鈥淭he Mis-Education of the Negro,鈥� founded the Association of Negro Life and History to protect all Americans from historical amnesia. Woodson was a consummate scholar and educator who also created and served as editor of the 鈥淛ournal of Negro History鈥� and the 鈥淣egro History Bulletin.鈥� These two resources are readily available at several university and seminary libraries.
In 1926, Woodson established an annual Negro History Week (now Black History Month), seven days in February devoted to the celebration of black history and culture. He selected February to honor the birthdays of two cultural change agents, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Douglass, who many regard as one of the greatest Christian intellectuals in American history, finds his name virtually unknown amongst most evangelical Christians then and now. It disappoints me to even think about this fact.
If you are unaware of this early 19th-century drum major for justice, consider reading his autobiography, 鈥淣arrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself.鈥� I recommend an edition edited with an introduction by Yale historian David W. Blight. Douglass鈥� story might radically transform your understanding of chattel slavery in the antebellum North and South, creating informed dialogue as you enter conversations about race relations in American history.
I agree with Woodson鈥檚 construal that 鈥渘o one can be thoroughly educated [in America] until he learns as much about the Negro as he knows about other people鈥� since black history is American history.
This month, and throughout the year, we have an opportunity to expand our thoughts concerning the African saga on American soil. Might our learning deepen our appreciation for one another and our commitment to take the gospel to different image-bearers in America and beyond.
