Frederick Douglass is dead. In 2017, President Donald J. Trump didn’t appear to know this fact. However, in 2025, he may still not know.

In kicking off Black History Month in 2017, Trump hosted a “listening session” at the White House, leaving attendants scratching their heads wondering if he knew Douglass - a self-liberated former enslaved male turned abolitionist - died in 1895. Expecting then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer to clarify what Trump meant regarding his comment on Douglass, Spicer, however, made it clear he, too, didn’t quite know if Douglass was dead.

“I think he [Trump] wants to highlight the contributions he has made. And I think through a lot of the actions and statements he’s going to make, I think that the contributions of Frederick Douglass will become more and more.”

The remarks from both Trump and Spicer could have been an episode of “Drunk History,” a TV comedy series where an inebriated narrator fumbles to recount historical events, which illustrates why we need Black History Month and an intensive tutorial for Trump and his administration then and now.

Post-racial myth

With the election of Barack Obama as president, queries arose concerning the future need for Black History Month. Some Millennials, in particular, whose ballots helped elect the country’s first African-American president, revealed that celebrating Black History Month seemed outdated. To them, the continuation of Black History Month was a relic tethered to an old defunct paradigm of the 1960s Black Civil Rights era and hindered the country’s progress.

So, too, did Republican Senator Mitch McConnell agreed in 2009. McConnell gave his reasons: the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 1965 Voting Rights Act enfranchised Black Americans, and the election of Barack Obama as the first Black president.

Obama’s candidacy was thought to have eradicated America’s Original Sin and marshaled in America’s dream of a “post-racial” era where race had finally become a “non-issue.” In trying to prove how “post-racial” Obama was as a presidential candidate, Michael Crowley of “The New Republic” wrote in his 2008 article “Post-racial” that it wasn’t only liberals who had no problem with Obama’s race but conservatives who had no problem also, even the infamous ex-Klansman David Duke. “Even white Supremacists don’t hate Obama,” Crowley writes about Duke. “[Duke] seems almost nonchalant about Obama, don’t see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton - or, for that matter, John McCain.”

Obama’s election encapsulated for some whites the physical and symbolic representation of Martin Luther King’s vision uttered in his historic “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington. However, from the March, Black Americans saw the deliberate racist political misuse of MLK’s quote, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The quote has been used to discredit all race-based remedies for historical injustice: Affirmative Action (In 2003, the SCOTUS allowed the Bakke case on “reverse discrimination” to stand. In 2023, SCOTUS ended affirmative action in college admissions in the “Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.” ), reparations, Critical Race Theory, African American History, and now DEI. Trump 2.0 canceling of Black History Month comes as no surprise. He canceled all so-called “identity months.”

For years, the celebration of Black History Month, especially among white conservatives, has always brought up their ire around “identity politics” and “special rights.” Republican Senator John McCain argued that “special rights” were why he didn’t vote for the MLK Holiday or acknowledge it until, of course, he ran against Obama for the presidency in 2008.

Identity politics and “special rights,” however, have always benefited white Americans and perhaps people of color in Trump’s camp. In Trump’s first presidency, he removed white supremacist groups - Ku Klux Klan, Identitarians, Identity Christianity, Neo-Nazis, and Neo-Confederates, to name a few - from the Countering Violent Extremism program to profile Muslims. In this presidency, Trump gave all the January 6th insurrectionists a get-out-of-jail pardon. Trump’s action has emboldened his followers more than ever not only to contest the celebration of Black History Month but to insist on a white history month. The pushback against Black History Month is decades old.

Living while black in Cambridge

Cambridge actively celebrates Black History Month, showcasing prominent historical figures. However, the city must also see its black residents as neighbors. I reside in Cambridge.

In 2009, Cambridge resident, the renowned Harvard professor and PBS’s “Finding Your Roots” host Henry Louis Gates was arrested, which created an international scene and left a pox on Cambridge.

Cambridge is ranked as one of the most liberal cities in America. With two of the country’s premier institutions of higher learning  -  Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology  -  that draw students and scholars from around the world, Cambridge’s showcase of diversity and multiculturalism rivals that of the UN.

However, when you scratch below Cambridge’s surface, there is also liberal racism that is as intolerant as Southern racism. Just like Southern racism that keeps blacks in their place, liberal racism does, too.

For example, Cambridge’s liberal moneyed class maintains its racial and economic boundaries not by designated “colored” water fountains, toilets, or restaurants but rather by its zip codes: 02138 - which is Harvard’s - where few blacks and people of color reside. But Gates did.

Major street intersections are known as squares, like the renowned Harvard Square. The residential border areas are designated numbers like Area 4 (now known as the Port), a predominantly black poor and working-class enclave. The biotechnology and pharmaceutical boom has now gentrified it. Cambridge’s liberal money elite exploit these tensions by their claims to not see race until, of course, an unknown black man appears in their neighborhood. Gates was arrested for breaking into his residential home in the Harvard Square area.

Still, we rise

During Black History Month, we gather to celebrate us. With 250 years of slavery followed by 90 years of Jim Crow and then 60 years of “separate but equal” discriminatory practices, we still rise. Our history is a canon for survival and an archive for future generations to pass along because our lived experiences are sacred texts. It’s Trump’s hubris to assume we need his permission to celebrate.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

member and Columnist, The Reverend

Irene Monroe is an ordained minister,

motivational speaker and she speaks for

a sector of society that is frequently

invisible. Rev. Monroe does a weekly

Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on

WGBH (89.7 FM), on Boston Public Radio

and a weekly Friday segment “The Take”

on New England Channel NEWS (NECN).

She’s a Huffington Post blogger and a

syndicated religion columnist. Her

columns appear in cities across the

country and in the U.K, and Canada. Also

she writes a column in the Boston home

LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows and

Cambridge Chronicle. A native of

Brooklyn, NY, Rev. Monroe graduated

from Wellesley College and Union

Theological Seminary at Columbia

University, and served as a pastor at an

African-American church in New Jersey

before coming to Harvard Divinity School

to do her doctorate. She has received the

Harvard University Certificate of

Distinction in Teaching several times

while being the head teaching fellow of

the Rev. Peter Gomes, the Pusey Minister

in the Memorial Church at Harvard who is

the author of the best seller, THE GOOD

BOOK. She appears in the film For the

Bible Tells Me So and was profiled in the

Gay Pride episode of In the Life, an

Emmy-nominated segment. Monroe’s

coming out story is profiled in “CRISIS:

40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social,

and Religious Pain and Trauma of

Growing up Gay in America" and in

"Youth in Crisis." In 1997 Boston

Magazine cited her as one of Boston's 50

Most Intriguing Women, and was profiled

twice in the Boston Globe, In the Living

Arts and The Spiritual Life sections for

her LGBT activism. Her papers are at the

Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College's

research library on the history of women

in America. Her website is

irenemonroe.com. Contact the Rev.

Monroe and BC.