Dickinson College has a long history of celebrating Black History Month annually, and this winter the Popel Shaw Center proudly celebrated the month via the theme of Radical youth: Organizing for rights and revolution from February 1-29. We also had a variety of campus partners that offered programs reflecting the Month’s historical focus.

The holiday was first celebrated in 1926 when the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (formerly the ASNLH, now called the Association for the Student of African American Life and History) sponsored Negro History Week during the second week of February. These dates were chosen to coincide with Fredrick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays. In the 1960s, colleges, influenced by youth activism, were pivotal in changing what was once called Negro History Week to Black History Month. The Month is celebrated widely by colleges, primary and secondary schools, community centers, places of worship and other educational and community venues. U.S. Presidents have recognized the month since 1976, and Canada and the U.K. are among the countries that also celebrate the Month.

The increased access of Blacks to education and employment opportunities, coupled with the visibility of Black celebrities and the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, led many journalists, pundits and cultural critics to ask whether we were now entering a “post-racial” age. The answer, based on ongoing social and economic stratification, is definitively no. The prefix “post” suggests that we as a nation actually recognized race as a social construction and organizing mechanism at some point, as well as its consequences for different populations, and this remains a stillborn issue.

The U.S. was founded with the ideals of a republic but has proceeded to become the world’s most powerful empire. Stealing and claiming land, generating warfare with indigenous people, participating actively in the mid-Atlantic slave trade, codifying legal discrimination against African-Americans, women, and indigenous populations informed the republic from its origins. Various legal and judicial reforms, including the Emancipation Proclamation, reconstruction era reforms, Brown vs. the Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and others have played important historic roles in advancing the nation toward greater equality. None of these reforms emerged independently; they were all controversial measures stimulated by steadfast organizing and activism by thousands of individuals and organizations.

We should not confuse record sales, TV ratings, or even White House victories as the penultimate symbols of racial progress. The closing and erasure of racialized socioeconomic gaps, in key areas like criminal justice, educational access and healthcare, are everyday measures experienced on the ground that more accurately capture the possibilities of a just and equitable society. The link between the Radical Youth themed documentaries the PSC screened this month, which included Freedom Riders, How to survive a Plague, and Dream: An American Story, is their emphasis on how everyday people, especially the young, have historically employed self-determination to advocate for justice. The desegregation of the interstate bus system, the breakthroughs in medical treatments combating HIV/AIDS, and the progress made toward comprehensive immigration reform are victories secured by vigilant responses to racism, homophobia, sexism, classism and xenophobia. These strategies are integral to ongoing intersectional movements challenging police brutality and criminal injustice including #BlackLivesMatter, the prison abolition movements, #SayHerName and other movements advocating for racial justice.

History is a discipline fundamentally premised on interpreting credible sources of details, dates, facts, etc. in a narrative form. The stories history tells us are integral to understanding ourselves, the nation and our role within the larger world. Black History is not a given within academe, many have fought for its legitimacy; nor is it a tangent to “standard” U.S. history. A multicultural group of acclaimed historians, including Taylor Branch, Elsa Barkley Brown, Vincent Brown, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Darlene Clark Hine, Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Eric Foner, John Hope Franklin, Paula Giddings, Lawrence Levine, Manning Marable, Nell Painter, Barbara Ransby, Jeanne Theoharis, and Howard Zinn, among others, have all contributed to our understanding of the United States by illuminating the impact of African-Americans. We know that Black History happens everyday, not just for 28-29 days out of the year. Still, we should continue to value and celebrate the Month as it provides an optimal, concentrated annual reminder that racial struggles are ongoing and there are many stories that remain to be told.

Written by Vincent L. Stephens, Ph.D., Director, Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity