“Black History is American History”
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
As we approach the end of the shortest month of the year, and corporations and organizations say goodbye to “Black History Month” till 2025, I’d like to point out that while the struggle to expand what was initially “Negro History Week” into *gasp* an entire month was successful, it is imperative that we fight to include our history into what is being taught to children, teens, and adults as well — all year round. This has been and will continue to be one of the goals of Black Kos. See this 2022 story: We cover Black history all year round, not just for Black History Month
Also, last year I wrote this mini-rant and have not changed how I feel:
Black Kos: You don't have to be Black to learn, teach, and honor Black History/American History
None of us — should be ignoring what is happening not only in Florida, but in all the parts of the U.S. that house people who embrace and tout MAGA, KKK, and Nazi terrorist ideologies. If you are not-Black, you have even more responsibility to fiercely fight back along with us who are, since we.did.not.make.this.shit and we are not gonna be able to fix it and steer a path to sanity alone. Ultimately, unless you take on the battle as yours, you will eventually be harmed even more than we are.
One of the beautiful things about Black Kos, is the bridges that are built here each week, between some of the Black members we have at Daily Kos and those committed folks who are majority not-Black, who come here and engage in the comments section. Thank you, you know who you are. Here’s hoping more readers will de-lurk, and introduce themselves.
I realize that Carter G. Woodson is still not a household name for many readers, though I grew up with a framed picture of him in my home. I thought that today would be a great time to talk about him again — and honor him as the founder of this month.
A brief review from the NAACP: Carter G. Woodson.
Carter G. Woodson was a scholar whose dedication to celebrating the historic contributions of Black people led to the establishment of Black History Month, marked every February since 1976. Woodson fervently believed that Black people should be proud of their heritage and all Americans should understand the largely overlooked achievements of Black Americans.
[...]
Black history ignored
After being barred from attending American Historical Association conferences despite being a dues-paying member, Woodson believed that the white-dominated historical profession had little interest in Black history. He saw African-American contributions "overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them."
For Black scholars to study and preserve Black history, Woodson realized he would have to create a separate institutional structure. With funding from several philanthropic foundations, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 in Chicago, describing its mission as the scientific study of the "neglected aspects of Negro life and history." The next year, he started the scholarly Journal of Negro History, which is published to this day under the name Journal of African American History.
Black History Month
Woodson's devotion to showcasing the contributions of Black Americans bore fruit in 1926 when he launched Negro History Week in the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Woodson's concept was later expanded into Black History Month.
The Library of Virginia produced a short 6 minute video on Woodson as part of their African Trailblazers series:
From “Why Black History Month” written by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham former ASALH National President
... during the mid-1960s, and especially when college students demanded courses on African Americans and led protests demanding Black Studies Departments, there were calls for extending Negro History week into a monthlong celebration from such groups as the Pan-American/Pan-African Association in Washington DC and students at Kent State University in Ohio, and from local communities throughout America. ASALH, however, sought recognition from the federal government, in the belief that it was important for our nation to set aside the month of February in official observance of African Americans’ contributions to the history of the United States and world. The first official observance came in February 1976, from President Gerald Ford whose words established Black History Month in eloquent homage to Woodson and ASALH. He proclaimed: “IN THE Bicentennial year of our Independence, we can review with admiration the impressive contributions of black Americans to our national life….[T]o help highlight these achievements, Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History. We are grateful to him today for his initiative, and we are richer for the work of his organization.”
Ten years later in 1986, which was also the first year of the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday, the U.S. Congress, in a joint resolution of the House and Senate, designated the month of February as “National Black History Month.” The resolution authorized and requested President Ronald Reagan to issue a proclamation in observance. In 1986, the Presidential Proclamation 5443 noted that “the foremost purpose of Black History Month is to make all Americans aware of this struggle for freedom and equal opportunity.”
What is ironic is that while we are now facing a MAGA Republican assault on the teaching of Black History, we see former Republican President’s Ford and Reagan’s names attached to the history of observance. Were they champions of anti-racism? Nope. Give this 2020 Esquire story from Gabrielle Bruney a read: “The “huge amount of dog-whistle racism that came from Reagan's own lips,” ... “was under-reported in the time and has been virtually erased from the popular imagination.” Ford was no civil rights hero either (see Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s 2006 HuffPo story)
But we are now faced with a MAGA-maniac running for the Presidency who openly insults Black Americans with vile rhetoric and calls out to his supporters to rally under a banner of hate. The concerted efforts to white-wash and erase our Black history, and the history of racism perpetrated against Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans cannot be allowed to win.
I am delighted to see the Biden-Harris campaign calling his racism out:
Yes — the Maniac is holding fake Black events:
Hmm.
However, this isn’t really about Donnie Dump. He’s simply a figurehead for the real problem — the white people who support him. English professor and activist Allison Wiltz wrote “Anti-CRT White Parents Are the New Segregationists,” on Medium, which was published in The Antagonist Magazine.
Segregation doesn't have to be blatant like holding signs and screaming racial profanities at Black people; it can be much more covert, like supporting policies that defund public schools or refusing to let your White child attend a school with a diverse student body. "There is a body of evidence indicating that information on racial composition dominates school choice." In other words, White folks' idea of "choice" is choosing not to send their students to school with Black children. But let's double back to critical race theory.
Anti CRT parents have become the new segregationists. To be clear, America's schools are already mainly divided along racial lines — true integration appears in name only. Schools cannot forbid Black students from attending, but they can create other barriers similar to the provisions used to gut the voting rights act. However, Anti CRT parents have picked up the mantle their parents left behind by fighting against inclusive curricula.
You cannot understand American history properly without taking race into account. After all, the country only protected the rights of White, landowning men in the beginning. Yet, ironically, if teachers bring up race, White parents will rail against critical race theory because heaven forbid we actually learn facts in school. In 1964, one White parent held up a sign in Fort Lauderdale that read, "segregation forever." Now, in 2021, we have parents holding signs that say, "save our schools," while another parent held one that claimed CRT stands for "creating racial tension." Sadly, these White parents keep peddling the lie that learning about racism promotes racism when in reality, avoiding a conversation about the harm racist beliefs, policies, and practices cause are the true travesty.
It is mostly white people like these women, who have to be confronted. From my pov as a Black woman, it has to be white people — family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers who will step up to the plate and do it. Added to that, white folks have to vote for elected officials who openly condemn and legislate against systemic racism. We Black folks are only 13% of the U.S. population. We cannot do this alone. The future history you will save, will also be yours.
Listen to what Keith Boykin had to say yesterday:
Nuff said.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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For 35 years, Soul Train was the beating heart of Black pop culture in America, considered appointment television for the millions of people who tuned in to discover the latest trends in music, dance, and fashion. In its more than 900 episodes, it launched musicians like Teena Marie, Curtis Mayfield, and the Jackson Five, and others like Vivica A. Fox, Jody Watley, and Rosie Perez, to new heights of fame. Now, 54 years after the groundbreaking show’s premiere, its impact on culture and history hasn’t diminished.
Soul Train was an ensemble show, featuring musicians, dancers, comedians, and special guests who came together to put on a grand show. It was glittery and glamorous, but also intimate and personal, with celebrities like Patti LaBelle, Elton John, and Little Richard mingling with the dancers in the audience. Simply put, you couldn’t miss it. Richard Gay, the producer of a soon-to-be-on-Broadway musical called Soul Train, tells Vox, “The day Soul Train was supposed to come on, we all knew we needed to have our chores done and everything together so we could watch. ... Then you got older and started tuning in so you could use the dances at the parties that weekend.”
I was too young to really engage with Soul Train during my childhood (and wasn’t even alive during its peak). Still, its legacy lives on for me. From reruns, I can recall with ease the intro, with the animated train, the screech of “The Soullll Trainnn!,” and a smooth voice calling it “the hippest trip in America.” I have vivid memories of Don Cornelius, Soul Train’s founder and legendary “conductor” or host. And the iconic Soul Train line, where people make a corridor and one person has the spotlight, dancing wildly and passionately down the line as everyone claps and cheers, which showed up at so many of my family functions and parties at my alma mater, the historically Black Howard University. It’s undeniable that Soul Train has been a huge part of my life, and that of many others, even long after it stopped airing.
Bethonie Butler, author of Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond, writes that the variety music program started as a local show on Chicago’s WCIU, a TV station that’s now part of The CW, featuring local musicians like Jerry Butler, the Chi-Lites, and the Emotions. The small local show, often described as the Black version of American Bandstand, an ensemble show that was once only for whites, quickly took off due to the culture’s hunger for the show and its host’s hunger for success. (Don Cornelius’s son said Cornelius wanted to be the “next Black Dick Clark,” the host of American Bandstand.)
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Shane Gillis is a 36-year-old guy from Pennsylvania who was chasing a fledgling standup career when he began making inroads in 2016 through the medium of comedy podcasting. This included a stint hosting a show called A Fair One for Compound Media, a podcast network created by Anthony Cumia, a notoriously offensive shock jock known for his own racist comments. Compound Media also hosted Gavin McInnes, the white nationalist who rallied other members of the network together to form the Proud Boys, the extremist group that played a major role in both the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and the January 6 insurrection.
Compound Media was the platform on which Gillis dropped the racist slurs that ultimately got him dropped from SNL. But it wasn’t the only medium in which he aired his views. In his independent comedy work and other projects, he was not shy about voicing repugnant views. As one Philadelphia comedy club noted in 2019 in a since-deleted tweet, “We, like many, were very quickly disgusted by Shane Gillis’ overt racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia - expressed both on and off stage - upon working with him years ago.”
In 2019, the comedy critic Seth Simons first drew attention to Gillis’s podcast racism after the announcement that SNL had hired Gillis. In February 2024, in response to the announcement of Gillis’s return to SNL, Simons compiled a list of discomfiting evidence for the LA Times supporting the idea that Gillis isn’t even being “ironic” about his use of racism in comedy — that he is, rather, plainly and truly a racist person. As Simons notes, the jokes Gillis made before he was famous, which included a litany of racist and antisemitic slurs and stereotypes, are so awful that “they should horrify us not because they are hateful but because they are full of joy.” As if all this wasn’t enough, Simons points out that alongside the rampant bigotry, Gillis has also voiced his unironic enthusiasm for McInnes, claiming that McInnes “crushes” his opponents in debate.
Simons then goes on to explore all the offensive views Gillis has continued to share since his fame took off in 2019 following his SNL hiring-and-firing. These have most often been tucked behind the paywall of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, which he hosts with fellow comedian Matt McCusker for the aforementioned 80,000 Patreon subscribers. These include a parade of unapologetically racist stereotypes and mockery, as well as ableist slurs and a whole array of anti-trans sentiments.
With all of this context as background, Gillis’s cultural rehabilitation seems artificial, to put it mildly. A 2022 New Yorker profile glossed over Gillis’s self-described affinity for Trump, portraying him as “conciliatory” toward left-wing audiences while taking a “jovial but firm” approach in downplaying the unironic support of his right-wing fans.
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The Cincinnati Opera will present an Afrofuturist-themed production next year that commemorates the Juneteenth holiday and would mark the first of three commissions from the company engaging all-Black creative teams.
“Lalovavi” is composed by Kevin Day with Tifara Brown writing the libretto and Kimille Howard set to direct the staging at Cincinnati Music Hall, the company said Thursday in announcing the opening presentation of its Black Opera Project. It will premiere on June 19, 2025.
“Lalovavi” means “love” in the Tut language created by enslaved Black Americans, and the three-act work is set in the year 2119. Discussions began in 2019 when Morris Robinson, a noted bass opera singer, starred in the Cincinnati Opera’s production of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” and told company artistic director Evans Mirageas there were not any operas reflecting Black American culture.
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Single Black women are outpacing Black men in terms of home ownership, but there are three main obstacles standing in their way.
According to CNBC, the percentage of Black women who purchased homes increased at an average yearly rate of 7.3% from October 2018 to January 2020. During the same era, Realtor.com showed that the annual growth rate of Black male buyers was only 3.4%.
The National Association of Realtors’ 2023 Snapshot of Race and Home Buying in America study indicated that single female purchasers are most prevalent among Black women, accounting for 27% of Black homebuyers. Comparatively, single women make up 24% of Asian homebuyers, 17% of white buyers, and 7% of Hispanic purchasers.
However, low-paying jobs, education debt, and mortgage eligibility tend to pose problems during Black women’s journey to home ownership.
“There are instances where Black people are buying homes, Black women are buying homes,” said Jacob Channel, a senior economist at LendingTree. “That doesn’t mean that it’s easy for them and that doesn’t mean that it’s not being made unnecessarily difficult by certain societal hurdles that stand in the way, that should not exist.”
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They were the ships that carried enslaved Africans on hellish transatlantic voyages through the 18th and 19th centuries, with up to 400 in a single vessel. Now the wrecks of 14 ships have been identified in the northern Bahamas, marking what has been described by a British marine archaeologist as a previously unknown “highway to horror”.
The fate of the African men, women and children trafficked in their holds is unknown, but if a vessel was sinking, they were often bolted below deck to allow the crew to escape.
Sean Kingsley told the Observer that this extraordinary cluster of wrecks reveals that enslavers had used the Providence Channel heading south to New Providence, Cuba and around to New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico.
These ships, which date from between 1704 and 1887, were mostly American-flagged, and profited from Cuba’s sugar and coffee plantations, where enslaved Africans faced a life of cruelty.
Kingsley said: “Cuba pretended to accept rules to end the slave trade, but pursued the largest trafficking [of enslaved people] in the world, making massive profits in sugar cultivation.”
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What 19-year-old Binta Usman remembers most vividly about her early days at the Lafiya Sarari girls’ school in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno state, are the frequent tears that made it hard for her to concentrate in class.
“We’d all be sitting in class and all of us would just be crying,” she says.
Like Usman, whose father was killed and family held captive by the militant jihadist group Boko Haram, all 100 women and girls at the school have either witnessed a parent’s murder or been kidnapped themselves.
Another pupil, 17-year-old Hassana, recalls being forced to join the militants, handling weapons and carry out acts of violence. “We drank blood,” she says.
Boko Haram has targeted schools as part of its campaign of atrocities in north-eastern Nigeria since 2010. It has carried out massacres and multiple abductions, including 2014’s killing of 59 schoolboys, the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014 and 101 girls in Dapchi in 2018.
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Former President Donald Trump has again sparked outrage with remarks he made last week about Black voters at an event in South Carolina.
The Republican presidential hopeful on Friday suggested that he could relate to the generations of racism that Black people have experienced in the U.S. legal system given the four criminal indictments brought against him. The cases have attracted more interest in his campaign among Black Americans, he argued at the Black Conservative Federation’s gala in Columbia, South Carolina, ahead of the state’s Republican primary.
Backlash followed.
“My first reaction was, ‘the caucasity of him to say that,’” Antjuan Seawright, a longtime Democratic strategist who has advised several national campaigns told theGrio. “It stems from a place of being fluent in privilege that he would even think that’s OK to say in a place like South Carolina and knowing our history with racism, bigotry and hate.”
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Voices & Soul
“… I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak… “
- Langston Hughes
”Let America Be America Again”
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
I have been in another cage match ruckus with the usual anti-Democracy red hat MAGA insurgents here in Sundown Town Southern Oregon, over their incessant effort to blow up public education and America itself. I have distilled my critique to a simple, “no tax dollars for private school tuition,” and it really triggers them. But not so much has listing a concise history of school choice and vouchers being steeped in the legacy of anti-bussing and anti-integration. They insist loudly they are not bigots while railing against “CRT and Woke Liberal commies grooming our kids for their racist, socialist agenda.” Racism being, against the white race.
It goes without saying I am appalled by the blatant historical revisions and ignorance that is on display by these Proud Boy Brownshirts as they regurgitate Heritage Foundation Project 2025 thug agitprop. Surely, if one has to lie to support an argument, the argument must not be very sound. What if we "edit" the lie out these discourses? What do we get? How about an honest assessment of where we came from:
What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts.
- James Baldwin
"A Talk to Teachers," Oct. 16, 1963
It is true that a Dream arose out of the disaffection experienced by those hungry, and poor, and convicted languishing in a tiny cell or beat mercilessly on the chain gang. It is true that tragedies and dangerous compromises occurred to make that Dream of America a possibility. Just let us not lie about where it was we came from and how it is we came to be who we are, let us look honestly to where our present is and where our future could be. Let us not lie to make the Dream true. It is said, Knowledge is Power and that is a sad truism when taking account of the axiom's terrible permutations. Ignorance though, masking itself as Knowledge, is not real Power, but real Ruination. The only real course to stem this ruination then, is to embrace Knowledge and not ignorance, to arm our minds and soul and activism against those corporate armies of propaganda, against those mobs of malice and hate, who in ignorance or guile, or both, would go to any means necessary to claw back the advances that generations bled and were lynched over, who would exclude whole populations by the level of hate generated against them, who would gleefully press their thumb on the scales of justice so as to prevent equal protection, due process and liberty for all.
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
- Langston Hughes
“Let America Be America Again”
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
