From Bondage to Books: An Idiot’s Guide to Black History Month
R. E. Thomas
Retriever Weekly Staff Writer
University of Maryland-Baltimore County
Another February has passed and another Black History Month is behind us. Thank God. The requisite 28 days of penance for the ills of the country’s forefathers has been paid; the gods of blackness are appeased and everyone can put away their pictures of Dr. King and stop watching the Bernie Mac show. Farewell, Black History Month. Good riddance.
Some have said that Black History Month, young as it is by holiday standards, is not long for this world. We’re becoming a multicultural society, the argument goes, and every month is Black History Month. But if May is Black History Month, and June, too, that whole Underground Railroad bit is going to get old pretty fast. I mean, honestly, how much Black History is there, really? Surely not enough to fill a whole year.
Blacks have been in this country, what, 200 years? 300 at best (it’s been a while since I saw Amistad; I have trouble remembering). That’s three PBS specials, if you stretch it; four if you let Ken Burns at ?em. But we really don’t need to; we all know about "Black History." Africa, slavery, Civil War, Jim Crow, Aretha Franklin, Civil Rights, MLK blown away, what else do I have to say?
Oh, and Colin Powell. And Oprah.
To be fair, when you lay it out like that, there is a good amount to talk about. Maybe the month should be annexed to March. Or January, since that’s when MLK’s birthday is, anyway. It’d be killing two birds with one stone.
But two months is a lot different than twelve months. Nobody has twelve months of history; not even white people. (Who learns about George Washington over the summer? No one, that’s who.) It all seems a little excessive.
There’s been a poster on display in the middle of the campus bookstore since the beginning of February in honor of Black History Month. Provided by Ballantine Books, it has pictures of Colin Powell, Toni Morrison, Muhammad Ali and a few non-famous African-Americans. The sign reads "From slave to scholar. African-American History Month." A more brilliant summation will never be found.
Blacks came to the country as slaves, now they’re out of the cotton fields and writing books and teaching schools and doing all sorts of white person stuff. It’s miraculous.
But at the heart of the matter, this is why Black History Month is only one month, (and the shortest month, but that’s just a coincidence). It’s a simple arc; if it were a movie, it’d be boring. Jungle savage-to-slave-to-best-selling author. Am I missing something? Blacks have won tons of Oscars, they have at least one Nobel Peace prize; they have like three magazines all about them, they make all the music; blacks even have their own channel. Blacks are everywhere, so much so that most of the time you don’t even notice them, unless there’s a lot of them or you’re in a bad neighborhood. What more could you possibly want?
So, maybe, instead of expanding Black History Month to the theoretical "every month," we should just rid of it all together. Who needs it? Not blacks. We all know the stories; we all know the history. And, obviously, African-Americans have overcome whatever obstacles stood in the way. Do you think 50 years ago there would have been an entire display devoted books by blacks in a college bookstore for a whole month? Of course not! (Well, maybe at Morgan, but that’s the way it’s supposed to be.) But now there is; Dr. King can rest in peace. For if Toni Morrison and Colin Powell, who apparently started off as slaves, can now be considered scholars and worthy of our attention, then all is right in the world.
R. Eric Thomas is assistant features editor. at The Retriever Weekly. He can be reached via email at
eric@trw.umbc.edu.
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