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WAKE UP CALL: Black History Month: Reading the blueprint |
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Written by RICHARD MCCULLOCH
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 Ever since I was a teenager in high school, I have been somewhat confused about the concept of Black History Month. My emerging intellectual curiosity forced me to ponder just why the history of black people was only relevant during the shortest month of the year.
Throughout my elementary, junior high and high school years, American history was presented with a conspicuous lack of color. Even when the calendar pages turned to February, and the photos of Martin went up in the school hallways, it always seemed a gratuitous attempt of acknowledgement that did very little to mitigate the other 11 months of African-American absence.
Then I went to Howard University, where every month became Black History Month.
It was at Howard that I finally began to decipher the importance of this brainchild of Carter G. Woodson, which evolved from Negro History Week in 1926 to Black History Month 50 years later in 1976.
Walking the campus of “The Mecca,” meandering among buildings named for Frederick Douglass, Alain Locke and Harriet Tubman, I began to see past the names and concentrate more on the implications of their actions and the importance of their legacies.
To turn Black History Month into much more than a mere rite of February, we must start using it as a time to decipher our past achievements and to use them as a blueprint for our future.
Repeating the names and spewing the bios of great African Americans in history may help win trivia contests and satisfy school-system mandates for Black History Month, but those efforts do not help us move forward and finish the job that they started.
The vital statistics of Martin Luther King Jr. are almost meaningless unless you show the younger generations that his ability to lead and inspire social and political change could not have happened without the benefit of his education and intellect.
Lesson: Education is the foundation of greatness.
Younger generations herald the defiance of Malcolm X without seeking the deeper meaning of his life and death. This is a man who went from being known as Detroit Red, worshipping fast money and his mentor, West Indian Archie, to becoming Brother Malcolm, worshipping the Holy Koran and Allah. That is not to mention his final evolution into El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz after his trip to Mecca inspired a modification of his separatist beliefs.
Lesson: Redemption finds those willing to change.
What must also be understood is that the famous are not the sole residents in the dominion of black history. Our history boasts the most ordinary of our predecessors exhibiting extraordinary selflessness in their commitment to the progress of our race.
From a petite seamstress named Rosa on a bus, to North Carolina AT&T students at lunch counters, simple citizens with a purpose changed American history. The great change agents in our history did not always carry college degrees or impressive titles. Some of them just carried signs that simply said, “I am a man.”
Lesson: Common folk, armed with a purpose, can accomplish uncommon things.
Let us use the blueprint of black achievement as a tool to forge a solid future. Too many of us have slipped into blissful complacency, content to ride into the future on the worn coattails of heroes past.
Black History Month should be considered a challenge to all of us to remain proactive in the fight to uplift our communities. Not to do so would leave one vital question unanswered: Who will be our contemporaries creating black history for our children’s children?
Richard McCulloch may be contacted at
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