by Justice Cynthia Ackron Baldwin (ret.)
February has come and gone and again I hear two seemingly paradoxical views expressed regularly—why do we need a Black History Month and why should we teach Black History in schools.
The answers are co-dependent. The rationale for Black History Month is to celebrate the achievements of Blacks in United States history because those achievements are not included in the American (United States) history courses taught in our schools. Most rational people would not argue the premise that Black history is an integral part of American history, but too often it has been left out of American history. Even when integration supposedly occurred, our history was still segregated.
If not for Carter G. Woodson, a Black historian and scholar, having begun Black Achievement Week in February 1925, which became Black History Week in 1926, there would be no Black History Month.
As Dr. Carter G. Woodson said, “Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” It is believed that Woodson chose February because both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were born in that month.
The week-long event officially became Black History Month in 1976 by the action of President Gerald Ford.
Unfortunately, we currently live in a time when some White politicians appear to fear the inclusion of Black achievements in American history. But the achievements cannot be denied. From the surveying of the Federal City which became Washington, D.C. to the building of the Capitol and the White House, Black people have been intrinsic to the founding and the foundation of this country.
In spite of racist attitudes, Blacks achieved in medicine from Dr. James Smith and Dr. Rebecca Crumpler to Dr. Charles Drew and Dr. Herbert Nickens and currently to Dr. Regina Benjamin and Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett.
Scientists like Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver, Percy Lavon Julian, Otis Boykin and Neil deGrasse Tyson helped make this country better.
In music and athletics, the list of names is too long to expound, but they cover people who have excelled in all musical genres including spirituals, blues, opera, jazz, country, rock ‘n roll, and hip-hop as well as in most sports including football, soccer, basketball, baseball, track and field, tennis, golf and hockey.
Art and literature have given the United States many talented Black people including Phyllis Wheatley, Augusta Savage, Jacob Lawrence, Selma Burke, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Amanda Gorman.
In economics, names like Sadie Alexander who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and became the first Black American to receive a doctorate in economics to Glenn Loury and Julianne Malveaux more currently are prominent.
In law, we recognize people from Macon Bolling Allen, George Boyer Vashon and Charlotte Ray to James Weldon Johnson (also a noted author) and Charles Houston to Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Politicians, both Democratic and Republican, from Hiram Revels to Edward Brooke, Shirley Chisolm, Robert N.C. Nix, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris have served this country of ours with distinction.
All people in the United States have benefitted from the achievements of those listed and from the achievements of many, many more whose color happened to be Black.
We may no longer have a need for a Black History Month when we realize that every month is United States History Month and people of all colors and ethnicities are part of United States history.
Maya Angelou said it best. “Won’t it be wonderful when Black history and Native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.”
(Cynthia Ackron Baldwin is a Retired Justice, Pennsylvania Supreme Court)
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