The radical act of remembering Black history

100 years ago on Saturday, Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson, the "Father of Black History," introduced the concept of Negro History Week after establishing the Association for the Study of Negro Life in Washington, D.C.

In particular, he wanted to make sure young Black boys and girls grew up knowing America’s story couldn’t be told without the contributions and courage of their ancestors. Because, as he once said: “There would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.”

In 1976, fifty years later, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month, expanding Woodson's vision to encompass the entire month of February. As we celebrate it today, we remember not just the towering figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but people like Woodson himself, Ida B. Wells and Fannie Lou Hamer, to name just a few. People who dedicated their lives to the simple, but radical demand that America embrace its full truth—with the belief that the truth might set us free.

One hundred years later, we're still confronting the fundamental truth Woodson already knew: America is telling a lie about itself. And we need to be honest about why.

Why, when the concept of teaching about slavery comes up, do some people cringe and cower from it, as if they identify more with the enslaver than the freedom fighter? Why not celebrate white abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, and their 20th-century counterparts such as Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Father Theodore Hesburgh, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and helped usher in the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Why is this administration doing everything in its power to ensure we never learn about the full horrors of slavery and the persecution and murder of Native peoples while pushing for the reinstatement of Confederate monuments?

And why are Black journalists like Don Lemon and Georgia Fort—who was recently featured on this very newsletter—so readily treated as criminals simply for documenting a protest, for bearing witness to the present? This isn't new. The suppression of history, of knowledge itself, has always been a weapon of control.

Frederick Douglass understood the answer. In his autobiography, he recounted the moment his enslaver's wife began teaching him to read—and the fury with which her husband shut it down. For, as his enslaver told him: "[Reading] would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself … it would make him discontented and unhappy.”

Knowledge, the enslaver knew, would allow Douglass and other slaves to comprehend more fully the systemic injustice being done to them—something Douglass expressed himself. Because education makes people harder to suppress.

A Carter G. Woodson memorial in Washington, D.C.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Banning books about Ruby Bridges or restricting lessons on Tulsa's Black Wall Street massacre, prioritizes white comfort over truth, or, as Dr. King said in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and keeps moderate white people “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” Those who practice such erasure are doing what the enslavers did—keeping people ignorant so they won't resist.

Because if an event never happened, it can't be condemned or learned from. And if we never learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. Again. And again. And again.

The loss of memory metastasizes into the erosion of our empathy and, subsequently, the encroachment on our collectively held freedoms. The rollback of voting rights. The attacks on DEI programs. The demonization of migrants. The criminalization of protest. The book bans. The denial of medical care and affirmation to trans people. These aren't new injustices—they're old ones in new packaging, returned because we keep refusing to reckon with them.

So, on this 100th anniversary of Woodson’s vision coming to life, let's make a choice. Let's learn. A lot. Let's teach our children what it means to be unafraid of history, with all its resilience and violence, heroes and villains, progress and backlash.

Let's tell them the whole story. Because it's the only story worth telling.

We already know where the other road leads: back to where we've already been, toward inequality, division and the comfort of lies. Embracing our collective memory is harder. It requires the courage to sit with both the discomfort and liberation that comes from the truth, and still endeavor to imagine something better than what we've inherited.

But it's worth it. For everyone who paved the way for us, and for everyone who comes after.

The fight for memory is the fight for freedom and for democracy itself. If we want to preserve that democracy, we have to remember, and practice, what makes it possible.

Correction: In last week's issue, we incorrectly listed Theophilus “Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama, as being from Selma. Connor was known to sanction tactics like turning high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs upon peaceful demonstrators. Jim Clark was the law enforcement official at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where civil rights demonstrators were brutally beaten while marching for voting rights. We sincerely regret the error. Words are not neutral, and we strive to be more accurate and careful with the ones we use.

The Fine Print

THE BIG PICTURE

LET'S EMBRACE THE WORK

GOOD TROUBLE

THE READING ROOM