“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.
|