“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.
