First and last sentence of book.
I've lived a lot of Black History Months, each one experienced in mostly side-eye mode.
Blacks treated as February's flavor never set well with me. It never harmonized with Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History's "Negro History Week," which was observed the second week of February starting in 1926. Their purpose was to encourage teaching the history of black Americans in our nation's public schools.
The teaching of black American history in U.S. public schools is beyond the scope of this thread, but ....
My thinking is there are countless American blacks whose history needs to be recounted in *addition to* MLK and the few others who get coverage in February. I have always felt that Black History Month has been co-opted, bastardized, and re-packaged for easy digestion and mass consumption for, mostly, people who are not black.
The present-day Black History Month project seems to *not* be about connecting the black diaspora with its rich past. Let's be clear, it's not.
But this February 2016 I feel I've experienced the blackest Black History Month ever because ... Sankofa!
We, the black diaspora, are choosing to fetch and not wait, hands stretched out, to be reconnected with what of ours had been lost.
Ashe!
#Formation #KendrickLamar #MelissaHarrisPerry (keep on keepin' it real, MHP, endings are new beginnings) #MavisStaples #WEBDuBois
