30 Days

For half of my childhood I was raised in Passaic NJ. At the time the city of Passaic was made up of mostly African American and Latino residents. My elementary school had about ten white kids total that I could remember. When my mother moved my siblings and me to rockaway NJ the ratio from minority to majority drastically changed. I was one of two African American kids in my entire class, and one of about eight in the whole school.

I can honestly say that despite the radical shift in diversity most the kids were really cool. I remember that first day of school meeting a lot of new kids that were just as curious about me as I was about them. After about a month or so I felt comfortable enough in my own skin to not worry that it was a different color than my classmates. I ended up making friends fairly quick and some of those same people I still talk to from time to time. All was going well until February 1st.

February 1st starts what is aptly called, “Black History Month”. I had no idea what black history month was. When I lived in Passaic our history books didn’t have two pages about Martin Luther King. Our history books were filled with (wait for it) HISTORY. It wasn’t black or white. I learned about Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey the same way I learned about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

I was in shock when my teacher started talking about black history in front of the class. Out of the twenty five kids in my class 23 of them were looking back at me. The only other African American kid in my class was from Rockaway so I guess he was already accustomed to it. After the five minutes speech about MLK my teacher then proceeded to put in a vhs tape of the civil rights movement in the 60′s. I sat there and watched as black and white protesters were sprayed with water and attacked by police dogs. My classmates were all looking back at me like it was me on the screen or one of my relatives. My embarrassment quickly turned to anger.

I wasn’t mad at my classmates I was mad at what was playing on the television. I couldn’t believe that this is what the kids in suburbia thought black history was all about. There was more to it than slavery and injustice. When I got home my brother Romont talked about the same thing. I guess the same VHS tape was at every school in the district because he saw the exact same video in his class. (He’s 2 years older) It wasn’t until my junior year in high school when I finally stopped worrying about the month of February. If it wasn’t for Valentine’s Day there would have been no relief from it.

Black history month was originally “negro history week”. Historian Carter G Woodson who was an African American scholar was part of the “Association for the study of negro life” and they designated the second week of February “negro history week” because it was during the week of both Abraham Lincolns and Frederick Douglass birthday. In 1976 president Gerald Ford signed off to extend it from a week to a month. The presidents’ direct quote was “Seize the opportunity to honor the too often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history”. So a month it was.

When I went away to college in North Dakota I met people from all over the world. When we would talk about high school I was amazed at how different their history books were from my mine. My friends from Canada and France didn’t have two pages regulated to just black history. Their history books amazingly just had history. I couldn’t imagine how different it would have been sitting in their history class growing up, instead of mine.

The argument today is why do African Americans have a whole month where we celebrate just their history? And I agree with the naysayers. We shouldn’t have a month to ourselves, no one should. We should have a year just like everyone else. Carter G Woodson started “negro history week” for the hopes of African American history one day just being history. Hopefully one day it is.