"People who had been slaves were still alive in 1926. Woodson wanted to make sure that youth of the era did not lose sight of the struggle; that the youth would know that their parents and grandparents had come through the fire.
"He was writing in the vein of the New Negro Renaissance, 1890 to 1920. Part of the culture of the time was to ridicule African-Americans -- minstrel shows; disparaging images of black people. Many black people were trying to distance themselves from those images by turning themselves into something else that looked white. Woodson wrote that the images were a problem but becoming something else was not the only strategy to fight those images."
"Black History Month is still necessary. But I am troubled by what it's become: its commercialization and the tendency to rehash familiar material. Often our public programs tend to be celebratory: We look for highlighted figures and beautiful words of motivation, the 'greatest hits' events. And we still don't look at what is a very troubled part of American history, in both the ways that African-Americans were treated and in ways that African-American aspirations have been so persistently crushed."
"I'd like to see an African-American history that considers change over time, that considers more than slavery on the one hand and the Civil Rights movement on the other hand; that looks more carefully at everyday activists and strong institutional bases in black communities historically.
"How do we tell the story of us, the story of America, in which you and I both read the story and say, yes, that's my story? Without that story, we're going to play the old game of insiders and outsiders. We're going to play a game of who counts and who doesn't count.
"In the age we live, a very democratic age, we better have a story that's equally democratic, because everyone needs to own this nation; it can't be the property of a few. It can't be the property of one group over another and our story better say that. It doesn't matter if you're a female or your ancestors came from Ireland or anywhere else on the globe, the fact is that as Americans, we benefit from the pressure that African-Americans have put on this system for 200 years toward greater equality, greater justice, greater acknowledgment to the humanity of all Americans.
"History is about empowerment. If I say to you that your story is important, I want to listen to your story, would you please tell me your story, then I'm saying to you, 'You are important.'"
| Four quotes from Leslie Brown, assistant professor of history and African-American Studies at Washington University, and then three from Robert Archibald, executive director of the Missouri Historical Society, in Harry Jackson Jr.'s St. Louis Post-Dispatch article "The history of black history"
posted in articles on February 15, 2004 7:12 AM | t (0)
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