I have heard many claims that it is a racist celebration and it only serves to create separation amongst people, but after some thought and research about the meaning of Black History Month, I would have to disagree. I find it to be the responsibility of an educated society to take pause for a chance to learn from the past.
 
It is a celebration not only of black history, but of human history. All history is intertwined, and investigation of the past from many angles gives us a better understanding of who we are today. If we are to ever pull out of the line of thinking we have hitherto marched, then we must analyze the mistakes and achievements that people before us have made.
 
Dr. Carter Woodson is considered by many to be the father of Black History Month. He once wrote, “The fact is that the so-called history teaching in our schools and colleges is downright propaganda, and effort to praise one race and to decry the other to justify social repression and exploitation.”
 
In U.S. history, the record of blacks and of women may be two of the most easily identifiable chronologies of oppression and triumph we have. It is because these two groups have distinguishable body traits that have made them easy to recognize and thus subjugate. Had communists had an easily distinguishable body trait, McCarthy would have had a much easier time suppressing the ideologue he so feared.
 
One of the most common criticisms I hear about the celebrations is that it is unfair. People point out that it would cause uproar if people organized a white history month. That may very well be true and to be quite honest, I would be one of the first to raise strong objection. I would not do so because I wish to get in some body’s way to pursue happiness and celebration, but because I see no reason to go out of our way for an education that more or less already takes place.
 
Black History Month is a time for us all to see the past from a different viewpoint than the majority of textbooks allow. It is certainly not the only time for this to happen, and I do hope that one day the original purpose of the month prevails and proper education takes place year round.
 
It was on Feb. 20, 1895, that the once slave, then abolitionist Frederick Douglass died. In 1857 Douglass said:
 
“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle… If there is no struggle there is no progress…Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.”