There is a myth that persists about Black History Month that can be heard in the common gripe: “They gave us the shortest month of the year” (they, the unnamed powers that be). Jarvis Givens, the author of I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month, hates it. “Every time I hear that backhanded comment it doesn’t seem right,” said Givens, an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “If you know anything about the basic origins of Black History Month then you know that we weren’t ‘given’ anything.”
The question of who owns and authorizes Black History Month holds particular relevance now, in its centennial year, and at a time when efforts to celebrate, preserve, and acknowledge Black people’s past in this country are under attack. Official recognition of Black American resistance to centuries of racial injustice is being challenged by local, state, and national efforts to restrict, ban and possibly criminalize such information in public schools, universities and other institutions. So the sentiment that Black history can be quite literally given or taken away by state officials is valid.
