In the beginning there was Jim Crow and Jim Crow is the root of most evil.  Jim Crow made it necessary for Carter Woodson to create Negro History Week.  It’s purpose?  “…a means of undermining the foundation of the idea of black inferiority through popular information grounded in scholarship.”  In other words, to show that black people were as smart as white people and equal contributors to the world in which we live.  And I have no doubt that in 1926, the year in which Mr. Woodson created the week – it was an effective measure.  His original intent was that the week would be so successful that eventually it would not be necessary.  That black history would be so integrated into standard American history.  After all, most black Americans are direct descendants of slaves, slaves that built America and whose history was American as anyone else.  I wonder how he would feel to know that now the “celebration” lasts all month long.

In 1976, frustrated by the insufficiency of one week recognition, Negro History Week was expanded to Black History Month.  Six short years after the civil rights and the black power movements it was an important time to enforce and remind the country of Black America’s influence and impact.  History books had scarcely started covering black history separately and certainly not equally.  But today, as we sit at the beginning of the 82nd anniversary of Black History month, why the hell is black history still segregated from American History?  Why are there so many proponents of Black History Month keeping this tradition around?  Don’t they see how it is ruining the rest of the year?