How can we celebrate Black History Month?

A government information resource to help us honor and reflect on Black History.

Blackhistorymonth.gov

In Civics this Week: Celebrating Black History Month

February is nationally recognized as Black History Month, an annual celebration hosted by The National Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). Each year ASALH assigns a theme to the celebration that frames their programming and outreach - this year the theme is “Black Health and Wellness”.

The origins of Black History Month are often overlooked. You can read a detailed overview from the ASALH here. According to this overview, Black History Month was first established in 1926 as “Negro History Week” by their founder Dr. Carter G. Woodson. As the founder of ASALH, Dr. Carter worked year-round to promote the study and appreciation of Black History, developing programming that was intended to instill pride in Black communities and also educate the greater public. The ASALH notes that Dr. Carter picked the second week in February to celebrate Black History Month because it marked the birthdays of both Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom he celebrated as emblematic of American freedom. The week-long celebration extended to the entire month in the 1960s and ASALH pushed for federal recognition of the celebration. Gerald Ford’s administration announced a national observance of Black History Month in 1976, 50 years after its establishment. In 1986, Congress officially named February “National Black History Month” and asked Ronald Reagan to issue a proclamation, which sitting Presidents now publish every year.¹

You can read President Biden’s 2022 proclamation on whitehouse.gov or in the Federal Register.² Traditionally, this proclamation ends by calling upon “public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe Black History Month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities”.³

The ASALH website is a great place to start if you’re looking for information, resources, and events to celebrate Black History Month. Many NAACP and Black Lives Matter chapters, public libraries, schools, and other organizations across the country offer programming during Black History Month, so check in with your local community to see what’s going on!

In today’s newsletter, I am going to highlight a website that centralizes government information resources related to Black History.

Taking a look at Blackhistorymonth.gov

Blackhistorymonth.gov is hosted by the Library of Congress in collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Each of these organizations features more Black History Month resources and programs on their respective websites. Blackhistorymonth.gov provides an overview of some of these selections and more on its Exhibits and Collections page. It also features a page on A/V content.

This year, the featured exhibit on Blackhistorymonth.gov is the new Searchable Museum released by the National Museum of African American History & Culture at the end of last year. Part of the Searchable Museum initiative is to make the museum’s exhibits and resources more accessible by featuring them on digital platforms.

The first exhibition published on the Searchable Museum is Slavery & Freedom, 1400-1877. This project also features a section entitled “The Constellation”, which provides entry points to the exhibit through historical artifacts and primary sources. Other components of the project focus on connecting past to present and highlighting overlooked Black figures throughout history. The exhibit is a great teaching and educational tool to use at school or at home. For educators, Blackhistorymonth.gov also features a curated section dedicated to teaching content and primary source education.

Returning to the main Exhibits and Collections page on Blackhistory.gov, you’ll find a list of digital collections and resources organized thematically with links to the Library of Congress, National Archives, Smithsonian, a few other federal institutions and agencies. Topics include Black educators, art & design, baseball, civil rights, culture, military, music, slavery, and emancipation. This page also includes several thematic research guides, which are interesting to browse even if you are not pursuing a specific project.

One of my favorite collections linked on this page is the Zora Neale Hurston Plays, housed at the Library of Congress but also available online. In this digitized collection, you can view images of Hurston’s original and mostly unpublished play manuscripts. Hurston’s plays are lesser-known but reflect important Black folklore research she conducted in the early 20th century throughout the American South.

If you look on the bottom left, you’ll see a list of “Expert Resources”. Many of the Library of Congress collections include resource guides, which are often very interesting, especially for making connections to other historical themes and figures. The Zora Neale Hurston Plays resource guide recommends some related digital collections that are equally fantastic - some include photographs taken by Hurston as well as interviews she conducted during the Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories initiative that was a part of the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s. Listen to interviews Hurston recorded here.

These are just two examples of resources featured on Blackhistorymonth.gov. The entire list is long enough that you are very likely to find a topic that is of particular interest to you. Personally, if I am reading a novel or history book on a certain topic or figure that I can find a collection on, I often like to accompany my reading with an exploration of that resource. Doing this helps me develop a deeper connection to the source material. But that is just one way that you can engage with these resources!

In Conclusion

The amazing thing about these online collections is that they are available for you to explore at any time. You don’t have to travel or justify a research project to access and use them - in fact, casual browsing can lead to some of the most interesting discoveries. These resources serve as a fantastic complement to books, movies, or other media you consume, but they also provide a wonderful opportunity for self-education all on their own. Additionally, Blackhistorymonth.gov is not just up for the month of February, it’s available year round as well (you do have to check back periodically for updated lists of events). This allows you to research Black History at any time rather than direct your focus to this crucial topic only once a year.

Let me know in the comments what you discover!

All screenshots are linked to the original source and were taken on 2/5/22.

1. Visit https://asalh.org/ for more information.

2. If you search for older proclamations in the Federal Register, include searches for both “National Black History Month” and “National African American History Month”, as the proclamation titles vary between the two.

3. The exact wording can vary from year to year. This quotation is from the 2022 proclamation. Librarians and/or libraries are generally included in the call to action every year. Donald Trump mentioned librarians in the proclamation for every year of his administration except for his last in 2020, where he noticeably left us out. I have a few suspicions as to why he did this, but as they aren’t fully fleshed out or well researched yet, so for the time being I’m just making an observation.