As we observe Black History Month 2026, it is imperative to address two truths.
First, “they” did not give us the shortest month of the year. Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week in 1926 and chose February to commemorate the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
In 1976, under President Gerald Ford, the observance expanded to a month. During this time, we celebrate Black contributions to the world. This leads to the second truth I wish to address.
This country has long elevated Martin Luther King Jr. as the admirable voice of peace, while positioning Malcolm X as dangerous, divisive and radical. This contrast was never accidental.
One man was celebrated because his message could be softened, extracted from its urgency and folded neatly into the mythology of American progress. The other was feared because he spoke truths that refused to be delayed, diluted or controlled.
Yet history has a way of circling back. Many of the conditions Malcolm X warned about — misinformation, institutional control and generational oppression — are not relics of the past. They are realities we continue to experience today.
Integration placed Black children into white systems that were neither prepared nor willing to see them fully. Black students were taught by white institutions that did not understand their culture, their history or the realities they would face as Black adults in a white world. These systems could not teach Black children how to succeed as Black people — only how to approximate whiteness closely enough to survive. This was assimilation dressed up as progress.
Malcolm X offered an alternative framework — one centered on self-definition, historical truth and urgency. His words warned that a people who do not control their own story risk becoming trapped inside someone else’s narrative.
He explained why miseducation is so dangerous: when the wrong history is taught, the wrong conclusions are drawn and entire lives are misdirected. He cautioned that studying today without examining how yesterday was engineered obscures how oppression stretches across generations, evolving quietly while appearing patient.
Malcolm X also spoke about power in ways this country did not want Black people to fully grasp. He argued that oppression survives on hesitation — that when people stop waiting, stop asking permission, power begins to shift. Systems do not fear resistance as much as they fear urgency. That is why patience is often preached to the oppressed while injustice continues moving forward uninterrupted.
Malcolm X warned that media messages can function as a weapon — misleading people to hate the oppressed and sympathize with the oppressor. In that confusion, the demand for justice can be reduced to a whisper.
However, he was clear: revolution is never a whisper. It is a demand. King expressed a similar warning: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Black History Month should be a time to use the past to propel us forward. To honor both King and Malcolm X honestly is to recognize that nonviolence without urgency becomes stagnation, and integration without self-awareness and determination becomes erasure.
Maxine Bryant is the founder of GriotSpeaks and an author.