Black History Month just started. But for some, the shortest month of the year isn't enough to get the job done...
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00:00It's never the end of Black History Month.
00:03It's every month. It's all year.
00:23During Black History Month, that's really what we celebrate.
00:27We celebrate the people who have shaped our heritage.
00:30We remember those who struggled for our rights and our freedoms
00:33and we reflect on how far we've come and how much farther we have to go.
00:59Black History Month comes about during Jim Crow in America.
01:08So there's a lot of African-American organizations coming about.
01:12The National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP,
01:16is created in the 1910s.
01:18And Dr. Carter G. Woodson capitalizes on that in the shadows of Jim Crow.
01:23He's talking about the past, writing down the history, right?
01:27Because American history at that time really didn't include African-American people
01:32other than the acknowledgement of slavery.
01:57Because American history in America had basically said that African-American people
02:15up until the end of slavery and after were only good for work and labor.
02:19They had no culture, no identity.
02:21There was no characteristics of the race.
02:24And so I think Dr. Carter G. Woodson does by educating children is creating racial pride
02:29and racial identity that would push the children to go on and do these things
02:34like Martin Luther King or John Lewis.
02:55The Civil Rights Movement does not take off until young people get involved, right?
03:01So you have the Greensboro sit-ins where they're sitting at the lunch counters protesting.
03:06And those are the students who would have probably been in school
03:09during the first iterations of Negro History Week.
03:12They pushed the president.
03:13They pushed the government.
03:14Because really, although it could be a communal celebration,
03:18I think delineating it as a nation really set it aside.
03:24The 58th annual Black History Month,
03:42a celebration of the part that black Americans have played in building our great country.
03:47The story of black Americans is one of valor in the face of hardship.
03:51The theme of this year's African-American History Month is
03:54From Slavery to Freedom, Africans in the Americas.
03:58Look at him. He's right there.
04:01That's me?
04:03Yes.
04:04And I'm here to celebrate black history.
04:08Yes, exactly.
04:28I don't want a Black History Month.
04:31Black history is American history.
04:33Black History Month shouldn't be treated as though it is somehow separate from
04:37our collective American history.
04:40There are well-meaning attempts to do that all around us,
04:42from classrooms to corporate ad campaigns,
04:45but we know that this should be more than just
04:50a commemoration of particular events.
04:57Until African-American people are no longer considered other or outside of the
05:13American fold, that we can have to have Black History Month.
05:17We are not like other ethnic groups that have, you know, you can't go to the,
05:21I can't go to Ireland and look up my history and find my roots.
05:25And so as people in the diaspora, we have to cling to it and hold on to it
05:29and be the ones who say, okay, this is important.
05:31It must be preserved because if not, we'll be lost in the pages of history.