“Those who have no record of what
their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration
which comes from the teaching of biography and history.”
- Carter G. Woodson
“A people without the knowledge
of their past history, origin and culture is like a
tree without roots” - Marcus Garvey
The need to once and for all embrace a
reasonable and comprehensive interpretation of African
history that inspires and uplifts Black people is evident
when examining how Black History Month is celebrated in
US culture. Like most other historic reflections, Black
History Month is sanitized with stagnate and idealistic
interpretations, aimed at removing the vital elements
of historical struggle and revelation. Today it is customary
during the month of February for media to make superficial
sound bites about "African-American" pioneers
in technology, sports, scholarship and anti-slavery activism.
While schools highlight leaders like Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas
and several others, rarely is the celebration used to
thoroughly reflect on the ethics, political vision, and
philosophical insights of these leaders. Rarely does the
celebration clarify the socio-political milieu in which
they struggled and glean relevant lessons from historical
context. Further, connections to Africa are generally
severed at the Middle Passage, instead of recognizing
the subsequent interconnections between the economic circumstances,
cultural expressions, and political movements of African
people. This is expected since it isn't difficult to see
how knowledge of these connections conflict with a corporate
capitalist culture that has effectively commercialized
Black History Month as a means to advertise commodities.
Nationwide Insurance airs a touching radio commercial
that doesn't even offer history, but simply appeals to
insure “personal Black history” by buying
life insurance.
However, a proper examination of Black
History Month must also take into account the laws of
change and historical development to which everything
is subject. In 1926, Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, an African
historian, writer, and educator, established Negro History
Week to honor the contributions of African people in North
America. For "historical clarity" African is
being used by this author to refer to all people of African
descent, whether they are born in North or South America,
the Caribbean, Europe or any other part of the world.
Born in 1875 to former slaves in New Canton, Virginia,
the extent and scope to which the Harvard educated Dr.
Woodson identified did not extend beyond North America.
Woodson even chose the month of February for the observance
of Negro History Week because the birthdays of abolitionist
Frederick Douglass and US President Abraham Lincoln fall
in this month. Regardless, Dr. Woodson contributed profoundly
to our understanding that a better knowledge of history
is critical for African people, at least in North America,
to achieve greater pride, self-determination and collective
progress. As go the laws of change, Negro History Week
itself transformed. About fifty years later, near the
close of the Black Power era (early 1970s), the celebration
was renamed Black History Week and even later expanded
to Black History Month in 1976. These changes reflected
a progression in how African people throughout the world
had come to identify.
Dr. Woodson insisted that history was not
the mere gathering of facts or a chronology of events,
but that the object of historical study is to arrive at
a reasonable interpretation of the social conditions of
the period being studied. Applying this objective to the
social conditions in which Dr. Woodson lived reveals coexistence
with the 1914 Garvey movement in the formation of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the
Black Star Line. The UNIA's movement, led by the Honorable
Marcus Garvey, broadened the ideological scope for African
people beyond the confines of birth-country and into the
extensions of the Diaspora.
Marcus Garvey offered a more inclusive
philosophy of how African people could identify, reflect
and engage. Before the UNIA, the Pan-African movement
found an earlier expression in 1900 at the first Pan-African
Conference convened in London by Sylvester Williams. Since
that first conference there have been seven subsequent
Pan-African Congresses, the seventh taking place in Uganda
in 1994. Consistent with the teachings of Dr. Woodson,
the inspiration that comes from biography and history
must necessarily include the context that connects the
"American negro" to a broader African people
scattered and struggling in 135 countries worldwide.
Since the founding of Negro History Week,
a host of positive and negative personalities, events
and historical developments have transpired, affording
African history instructive and dynamic lessons for humanity.
More has also been learned about philosophies and methods
of history. Nevertheless, the most instructive lessons
are largely neglected. Black History Month must do more
than emphasize the inspiring achievements of great individuals.
It must also help in refining a historical philosophy
and method of study that helps us understand the prevailing
conditions of our time. Historical study should explain
such phenomena as how young Africans from the Congo to
Haiti, from urban neighborhoods in the USA to other parts
of the world are armed and wreaking havoc on their own
communities. It should be able to explain how a people
from a continent that has spawned some of the greatest
contributions to world civilization are, today, persistently
plagued by apathy, disease, poverty and political disempowerment
in communities around the world. Neglecting the history
that connects Black experiences and struggles beyond the
confines of a particular country renders Black History
Month deficient and leaves room for the notion of African
inferiority.
Historical context presupposes more than
outstanding achievements and personalities or else is
it sterilized into something incapable of explaining present
global challenges and illuminating future direction. For
example, it is clearly significant that in March 1978,
the US National Security Council issued secret memorandum
46 in response to directives from the president that "a
comprehensive review be made of current developments in
Black Africa from the point of view of their possible
impacts on the black movement in the United States".
This memo demonstrates the attitude and multiplicity of
political and economic interests influencing US policy
toward Africa and African people:
"…. adverse to U.S. strategic
interests, the nationalist liberation movement in black
Africa can act as a catalyst with far reaching effects
on the American black community by stimulating its organizational
consolidation and by inducing radical actions."
Surely it is a positive thing for any African
community to achieve greater organizational consolidation
and radical change from adversity. Instead, the memo recommended:
1. Specific steps should be taken with
the help of appropriate government agencies to inhibit
coordinated activity of the Black Movement in the United
States.
2. Special clandestine operations should
be launched by the CIA to generate mistrust and hostility
in American and world opinion against joint activity
of the two forces…
3. US embassies to Black African countries
specially interested in southern Africa must be highly
circumspect in view of the activity … opposing
the objectives and methods of U.S. policy toward South
Africa…
4. The FBI should mount surveillance
operations against Black African representatives and
collect sensitive information on those…include
facts on their links with the leaders of the Black movement
in the United States, thus making possible at least
partial neutralization of the adverse effects of their
activity.
This history demonstrates that African
people need to develop institutions for coordinating our
political activities internationally; to generate faith
and unconditional support for these activities; and to
take control of information about our history and current
geo-political events.
It’s common knowledge that the continent
of Africa is the most naturally rich continent on earth.
It is also painfully clear that African people everywhere
are among the poorest and most oppressed. A proper reflection
of Black history can combat this by educating people about
the forces in conflict with African progress and providing
lessons from past successes and failures. To combat inferiority
complexes, African people need to know that profound forms
of organized resistance have been and are being waged
against slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.
It is inspiring to know that the Civil
Rights and Black Power Movements in the US were taking
place simultaneously with similar struggles for independence
and self-determination in Africa and the Diaspora. Leaders
like Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Dubois, Sekou Ture
and others were meeting with one another, making plans
and concretizing the Pan-African agenda. Knowledge of
such things has proven to resolve notions of inferiority
and to imbue African people with a greater sense of social
obligation. The social movements in African history intersect
across geographical boundaries and are energized by class
struggle. The context in which we consider ourselves must
be commensurate with the exigencies before us, which exist
within an increasingly globalized yet more polarized world.
Just as Negro History Week has evolved into Black or African-American
History Month, to continue having value, it must evolve
into a Pan-African Historical Context.
BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator Netfa Freeman is director of the Social
Action & Leadership School for Activists (SALSA),
a program of the Washington DC based Institute for Policy
Studies (IPS).
Click
here to contact Mr. Freeman.
