I always enter Black History Month with a bit of ambivalence and a heavy dose of resentment. It’s like someone is “allowing” us to celebrate our heritage, culture, and existence. “Oh, it’s time to let those colored people, I mean people of color, feel good about themselves. Let’s walk along the trail with Harriet Tubman, discuss how Benjamin Banneker saved the plans for DC, and shout hallelujah to MLK’s I have a Dream speech and move on with the rest of the year.”
Where would they be without us? If it wasn’t for us, they wouldn’t have a pot to you know what in or a window to throw it out of. Yet we’re supposed to feel honored to have a whole month to celebrate? Please!
When it comes to Black History, I wasn’t born with a quiet spirit. Growing up on West Virginia Avenue in Northeast DC, our basement wall was lined with 24 x 36-inch black and white posters of Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s classic fist-clinched Black Power salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics. And legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, whose rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock is a classic. The posters were complimented by a 12 x 24-inch cardboard poster with the message “If you’re not part of the solution, You’re part of the Problem.” Looking back at the size of the basement as an adult, I’m pretty amazed we could get them all on the walls. Over the past year, that restless spirit has grown even more disquieted.
Growing up, the book that captured my attention the most was Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door. The irony of it all is that the book was recommended to me by a white Jesuit priest who must have recognized the disquiet in me even then. There’s also irony in the title itself and it stirred the revolutionary spirit within me. Over the past year that disquiet erupted again through a barrage of books ignited by We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance by Kellie Carter Jackson. Those 2 words “We Refuse” epitomized the disquiet that was slowly developing a thin layer of dust and indifference — or maybe the chronic anger — that becomes a persistent state of mind. Whatever it was that We Refuse rekindled, it couldn’t have come at a better time. The scroll at the bottom of The DC Voice home page represents that eruption.
Malcolm X is claimed to have said “if you want to hide something from black people, put it in a book.” The truth to that probably lies in the fact that the only books we were exposed to were often written by the perpetrators of the crime. For every hundred pages in a history book devoted to white superiority and genius was one footnote on how that superiority and genius was created, designed, or engineered by a person of color. So, I guess if you read enough foot notes, you’d finally find the truth.
Last year, through the flood of books written and audio, I discovered the distinction between what the older generation called liars and damn liars! The books I read coming up in grade school revealed them as liars, compared to the more revealing story of Black History where I realize they were damn liars. My current read, Black AF History by Michael Harriet, is off to a good start and well on its way to becoming another inspiring account of Black History and joining the scroll at the bottom of The DC Voice home page.
If you really want to know where they would be without us, start by joining The DC Voice Book Club and add to the growing list of books by Black authors telling our own story in our own voice. Be one of the first 10 book club members to write a book review and receive a DC Voice mug as a token of our appreciation!
Make it known that we refuse to be cowered, silenced, ignored, trampled underfoot, a footnote in history, disrespected, disenfranchised, or taken for granted.
Featured image courtesy of Freepik.