NNPA Columnist Julianne Malveaux
Why, the email asks, do we still have Black History Month?
The writer identifies herself as a “conscious woman.” She seems chagrined that “race still matters.” We have a black president; black people have made so many strides. Aren’t you holding on to the past, she argues, when you insist on having this month to study black history?
When I pick up high-school history books, I see African-American history sprinkled through, like seasoning, as opposed to being placed at a base. And I think of the tremendous vision of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the second African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard (after W.E.B. DuBois) and the founder, in `1915, of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
Woodson wrote the masterpiece The Miseducation of the Negro and founded Negro History Week in 1926. By 1976 the week had expanded into African American History Month. The association, based in Washington, DC, sets a theme for Black History Month each year. This year: The History of Black Economic Empowerment.”
Economics is the study of who gets what, when, where and why. We get less than we deserve, not for lack of trying, but because the playing field for us has never been level. For centuries we could not accumulate wealth in the U.S. because we were the source of wealth for others.
Free frank McWhorter’s story is compelling. Free frank used his free time to work to save money to buy himself back and, thanks to his descendent, Dr. Juliet Walker, we know the story.
Fast forward from Free Frank to Billionaire Bob – Bob Johnson, the brother who conceived of BET and then sold it to Viacom, creating dozens of millionaires and turning himself into a billionaire. Johnson is a consummate entrepreneur, one who leveraged an idea into a profit center.
Then there is Dr. Sadie Tanner Moselle Alexander, the first black woman to receive a doctorate in economics in the U.S., or Madame CJ Walker, the first black woman millionaire. Maggie Lena Walker was the first to start a bank in Richmond, Virginia.
We still have Black History Month, I would tell my correspondent, because the story has still not been told. I am grateful and humbled by the vision of Dr. Woodson, and by his commitment to remind us of who we are, again and again. We have taken up the baton of his vision and are about to pass it on. In the words of Dr. Maya Angelou, and still we rise.
Dr. Julianne Malveaux is president of Bennett College for Women. She can be reached at presbennett@bennett.edu.