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Black history is currently facing a persistent threat. The teaching of Black history is being subjected to a concerted assault.
This recurring assertion has been prevalent in the news since 2019, following the backlash to the publication of the New York Times 1619 Project. However, it is important to recognize that this assault is not new. The suppression of Black history in the United States has been a fundamental aspect of our educational system since the establishment of public schools.
In an address to educators in 1963, James Baldwin urged his audience to enhance their understanding of American history and its racial legacy. However, he warned them that a serious “attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but society” would be met with a brutal and “determined resistance.”
More than 60 years after Baldwin’s speech, resistance against teaching Black history persists, and it existed before Baldwin spoke to the teachers in New York City. Baldwin understood this and actively participated in the Black community’s efforts to educate themselves and shed light on the atrocities of slavery, racial violence and American racism. Concurrently, they championed the love, laughter, and triumphs of Black history and sought to make it all accessible to the general public.
Despite backlash, the Black community has consistently pushed to teach Black history, whether sanctioned or not. Community-based educational programs associated with Black History Month are a lasting example of this effort.
The origins of Black History Month can be traced back to 1926, when Carter G. Woodson, the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, established Negro History Week. This initiative gradually evolved into Black History Month during the 1970s.
Woodson advocated for the establishment of Negro History Week to ensure that Black history and culture were not marginalized in our national discourse or educational systems. He did not perceive it as a superficial “token” week of study and attention, but rather as a foundation for the inclusion of Black history in educational curricula from elementary school through college, in both Black and white schools and communities.
He occasionally remarked that Negro History Week would eventually evolve into “Negro History Year.” Furthermore, with the unwavering optimism of an educator, he believed that the exposure to Black history would lead to the triumph of truth and ultimately dismantle prejudice in America.
From the outset, Woodson demonstrated considerable effectiveness. As historian Pero Gaglo Dagbovie has explained, “Negro History Week was the first major achievement in popularizing” Black history.
From the very beginning, Kansas schools, churches, and organizations were supportive of Negro History Week. In Lawrence in 1926, the first year of the observance, the Parent-Teachers Association of Lincoln Elementary School sponsored a community lecture by Ninth Street Baptist minister, Rev. G. N. Jackson, alongside school programs and lessons on the week’s themes.
In Wichita, St. Mark’s church, who urged all to attend and participate because the “Race needs to know its history,” had a weeklong program with lectures on Black literature, history, labor, religion, business, military service, and education with musical accompaniment for each event.
By the 1930s, Negro History Week celebrations had spread to more Kansas communities. Parsons’ local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held annual events at New Hope Baptist or Brown Chapel AME churches. The community also had exciting lectures, pageants, and musical programs yearly at the Douglas school.
Emporia also began holding annual events as did Black communities in Topeka, Wyandotte, Manhattan, Salina, Hutchinson, and Iola, who had a program in 1938 at the local high school, which included a rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem written by James Weldon Johnson and his brother John Rosamond Johnson, by the community glee club. They also had a guest speaker from Washington, D.C., Emmer H. Booker, who discussed “Some Historical Facts About Unconquerable Souls.”
Lawrence’s Sierra Leone Club, Lincoln School, and the University of Kansas’ Delta Sigma Theta sorority also held programs throughout the decade.
Kansas and Missouri’s community efforts to teach Black history during these early years of Negro History Week were recognized and celebrated. In 1934, Woodson, in acknowledgement of the region’s success, came to Kansas City during the national celebration to participate in the festivities and give three lectures at Paseo Baptist Church, Lincoln High School (MO), and the Paseo YMCA.
Throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s, more Black communities in Kansas celebrated Negro History Week and held educational programs connected to the themes Woodson announced each year and would use the materials circulated in the Negro History Bulletin in school classrooms and curriculum.
Furthermore, as the modern Civil Rights Movement began to gain steam, a few communities started to take a larger role in the activities around Negro History Week. This included Ottawa, whose mayor and commissioners issued a proclamation declaring the week of Feb. 10-17, 1957 as Negro History Week. In their announcement they called on the citizens of the city to “aid in fighting bigotry by dissemination of truth” about the Black community “as a factor in History and civilization.”
As the Civil Rights Movement continued to gain victories and the struggle transformed into a call for Black Power, a celebration of Black Arts, and a call for community control, several communities began to demand the teaching of Black history in the schools. This occurred in many Kansas school districts, including Lawrence, Wyandotte, Topeka and others in 1968.
That same year, the Kansas Senate had a bill introduced to teach more Black history in the state’s public schools. The bill was opposed by the chairman of the Senate’s Education Committee because “the legislature is never in a position to enact a curriculum.”
Additionally, in December 1968, Black students at KU and the newly created Black Student Union sponsored a lecture by Lorenzo J. Greene, longtime associate of Woodson and professor of History at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, entitled, “Negro History and the Truth Shall Set You Free.”
The following term, Greene was hired to teach one of 11 courses taught at the university on what they called “Negro History Courses” but were classes in history, race relations, political science, anthropology, and more.
This initiative to establish such courses at KU was championed by the Black Student Union and student activists and resulted in the creation of one of the nation’s earliest Black Studies Departments. Today, that unit, now known as the Department of African and African-American Studies, remains an active and vibrant unit on campus.
In 1969, the Lawrence community celebrated Negro History Week with a spirited discussion at the First Baptist Church, led by Deerfield Elementary School teacher Daphne Harris. The lecture encompassed a wide range of topics, including slave rebellions, the life of Nat Turner, the contributions of Harriet Tubman, Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Marion Anderson, Carter G. Woodson, and numerous other figures.
The evening ended with a reading of a Paul Laurence Dunbar poem by Harris’ daughter.
In 1970, Lawrence High School’s Black American Club used Negro History Week to host what they called Black Heritage Week (Soul Week).
The week had daily themes and conversations, including a talent and fashion show, question and answers on “Black Heritage,” book reviews of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, and more, and a production of Douglas Turner Ward’s play, “Day of Absence.”
In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued a proclamation recognizing Black History Month. Since the 1940s, there had been a consistent effort to expand the recognition from a week into a monthlong celebration. This concept gained significant traction during the late 1960s and culminated with Ford’s proclamation.
A decade later, in 1986, 60 years after the first celebration, Congress passed legislation designating February as Black History Month.
Since then, the observance has gained greater recognition, yet it has also been diluted and commercialized within the confines of America’s capitalist society.
Despite this, local Black communities, churches, and organizations in Kansas and elsewhere have diligently preserved Woodson’s original spirit and continue to impart the significance and fundamental essence of Black history to American history, regardless of societal support.
We should all champion their efforts and Woodson’s legacy, no matter the resistance.
About this column
“The Way of the Wide, Wide World” is a regular column about race, history and politics by Shawn Leigh Alexander, professor of African & African-American Studies at the University of Kansas. Dr. Alexander is the author of, among other titles, “An Army of Lions: The Struggle for Civil Rights before the NAACP” (2012) and “W. E. B. Du Bois: An American Intellectual and Activist” (2015). He is also a frequent consultant and contributor on PBS documentaries, including “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War” (2019) and “Niagara Movement: The Early Battle for Civil Rights” (2023).
Read more of “The Way of the Wide, Wide World” at this link.
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