There Is Definitely A Need For A Black History Month

The African-American actor Morgan Freeman is quoted in The Guardian (April 18, 2023) as telling a British publication that he considers Black History Month to be an "insult."

"You're going to relegate my history to a month?" Then he goes on to say "Black history is American history; they're completely intertwined." Freeman should be reminded that Black History Month (originally created by the historian Carter G. Woodson as Black History Week to be celebrated every February) came about because black accomplishments were excluded from American history and thought not to be important enough to be studied. Plus, it should be noted, black history is not limited to the United States. There are black people all over the world.

If blacks had been included in the study of American and world history in the first place, there would be no need for a Black History Week or Month. And with efforts by Governor Ron DeSantis to whitewash American history and dictate how it should be taught in Florida institutions of learning, black history is needed now more than ever.

As far as Freeman's objection to the term "African-American" is concerned, my answer to that is, yes, we know Africa is a continent, not a country. But since few, if any, blacks in the United States can point to a specific area of Africa as an ancestral home, we can claim the entire continent because we know it is where our forebears originated.

A Biopic About An 18th-Century Black Violinist In France

As soon as I read in The New Yorker (March 13, 2023) that a biopic called Chevalier, about an 18th-century black violinist and composer, was slated for release in April, I wasted no time going to my bookshelves.

The book I took down is my go-to reference on blacks in the classical music world, the late Raoul Abdul's Blacks in Classical Music, published in 1977 by Dodd, Mead & Company. (Abdul was the music critic at the New York Amsterdam News.)

I turned to the chapter on Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1739-1799). He was born on the Caribbean island of Guadalupe to an African mother and the French governor of the island. (The movie synopsis described the father as a plantation owner.)

After reading the chapter, I could see why the director, Stephen Williams, chose this historical figure, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr., to make a movie about. Saint-Georges had a larger than life persona during his lifetime. He was a brilliant violinist who, wrote Abdul, "acquired a mastery of that instrument comparable to the best of his day." Saint-Georges also was "an outstanding swordsman, a brilliant conversationalist, and altogether the darling of French society."

Will people out of curiosity see Chevalier in large enough numbers to make it a hit? Who knows? Judging by the comments left on the movie's trailer page, there is a lot of interest in seeing it. And maybe that interest will encourage concert halls around the world to showcase his music.

A Black History Month Reminder

Today is the first day of Black History Month. Be sure to read a few black history books and learn of the contributions black people have made to world history, not just to American history.

The Underground Railroad Ran North And South

Until I started reading biographer Charles J. Shields's book, Lorraine Hansberry, The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun (Holt, 2022), I thought all black fugitive slaves fled to freedom on the Underground Railroad in only one direction--north to Canada.

In fact, there were fugitive slaves who fled to Mexico via the Underground Railroad. Here is what Shields has written about the journey south of the border:

"During the years of American slavery, the Underground Railroad went south as well as north. The southern route crossed into Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1829 for economic reasons. The farthest point on the escape route was the 'Freedom Station' located in Mazamitla, Jalisco, roughly sixty miles south of Ajijic [a village]. Some of the campesinos bringing their farm goods into Ajijic  [during Hansberry's trip there] were descendants of escaped slaves from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama."

Black History Month Suggestions

Last year (February 4,  2019), Dr. Steve Kussin, the education reporter for WCBS Newsradio Eight-Eighty in New York, did a one-minute segment suggesting ways schoolchildren could celebrate Black History Month.

Below are Dr. Kussin's suggestions:

"Listen to some famous speeches such as Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream'; study the landmark court case Brown versus Board of Ed; read the biographies of famous black people such as Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, and Paul Robeson; research famous African-American inventors and performers who made it in the arts; schedule a concert featuring the music from the Civil Rights Movement; read a novel or short story written by an African-American author; plan a dance festival; schedule a concert; plan an exhibit featuring the work of black artists; hold a food festival; search for photos capturing the civil rights struggles; interview people who were active in the movement; view the CNN series Black America; organize an assembly or design a project supporting a charity important to the African-American community. Quite a list."

Indeed, it is quite a list. And a useful one, too. However, despite Dr. Kussin's good intentions, he, like a lot of people in the media, ignore the fact that Black History Month is not just about the accomplishments of black people in the United States. There are and have been black people in other parts of  the world, including, needless to say, sub-Saharan Africa. And to limit the focus to the United States gives schoolchildren a distorted and incomplete view of black history. It renders non-American blacks invisible and unimportant. To be fair, Dr. Kussin did mention Nelson Mandela but that is only one name from outside the United States.

Overlooking black people from outside the United States ignores the fact that various black-led movements such as the Harlem Renaissance (or the New Negro Movement) influenced, and in turn, were influenced by others in the African diaspora.

It is important to reveal these interconnections and cross-pollinations to get a better understanding of black lives, black thinking, and black accomplishments in all of their diversity.

Note: Kussin is pronounced "kew-sin."

A TV Program About Blacks In Latin America

In the fourth and final episode of historian Henry Louis Gates's PBS program, Black in Latin America, which dealt with the African diaspora in Mexico and Peru, Gates neglected to mention that the Mexican painter Diego Rivera had a black grandmother, per Langston Hughes biographer Arnold Rampersad.

Furthermore, it would be interesting to see if Gates does a  Black in Europe series on PBS. That would be an eye-opening program, revealing how much influence African descended individuals have had in various European countries throughout the centuries up to present times.

Note: Today is National French Fry Day!

Black History Month 2019

Today is the beginning of Black History Month. Celebrate it with pride and knowledge.

Celebrate Black History Month!

Today is the beginning of Black History Month. Celebrate black achievement in America and throughout the world via books, films, lectures, etc.

New Yorker Front Cover Celebrates Black Achievement

One of the most beautiful and frameworthy magazine covers I've ever seen was the one for the February 22, 2016 issue of The New Yorker by African-American artist Kadir Nelson. It is titled "Schomburg Center, Harlem, New York" and was obviously published in commemoration of Black History Month.

The illustration is a collage consisting of images of such black icons as James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, and Duke Ellington (sitting at a white piano). In the lower right hand corner are the ivy-covered building that formerly housed the Schomburg Center and the library's newest building that faces Lenox Avenue and abuts the old location.

I can't think of a better tribute to Black History Month and the role Harlem has played ( and continues to play) in the cultural life of America and the world.

A heartfelt thanks to The New Yorker  for publishing and Kadir Nelson for creating such an awesome and memorable cover.

Barack Obama Is NOT From Kenya

For Black History Month in 1991, St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser beer, published Black Facts Booklet which was small enough to fit into a shirt pocket or purse.

Among a handful of glaring errors was a factual one that would have delighted today's conservative pundits: "Barack Obama," noted the booklet, "the twenty-eight-year-old law student from Kenya [emphasis mine] became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review." (And later the first black president of the United States.) First of all, Obama would have been closer to thirty years old in 1991 and secondly, he was born in the state of Hawaii, not Kenya, which would make him an American citizen and eligible to run for president. His father, on the other hand, was the one born in Kenya. He met Obama's mother when he was an exchange student in Hawaii.

So the Black Facts Booklet was not as factual as the title would have readers believe.

Choreographer Pearl Primus, A National Treasure

In the 1940s and 1950s, Pearl Primus (1919-1994)--dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, educator (she was professor of Ethnic Studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts)--created such a stir with her African-based dance works among critics and the public alike that Walter Terry, the dance critic, proclaimed her "the world's foremost authority on African dance."

That designation, resulting from her years of travel throughout the American South, the Caribbean, and Africa to study and document black dance in all of its forms, is anchored to her "search for roots" and her need to reveal "the dignity, beauty, and strength" of black people.

The Trinidadian -born artist-scholar's quest gave rise to a photo-biographical exhibition in 1989 called "A Search for Roots: The Life and Work of Dr. Pearl Primus," at the Caribbean Cultural Center in New York. The exhibit consisted of enlarged black-and-white performance photos from such dances as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," based on the Langston Hughes poem and "Haitian Play Dance" as well as facsimiles of printed concert programs.

In 1990, at New York's City Center, the Alvin Ailey dancers offered dancegoers, who weren't around during Primus's heyday, a real treat--the company premiere of one of her dance works, "Impinyuza." A paen to the royal dancers of the Watusi people, the dance, created in 1952, uses traditional music and costumes, and was reconstructed through funding provided by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund.

African-American dance historian Joseph Nash, a Primus dancer from 1946 to 1947, laments the non-existence of a film record of Primus's work. Such films would have given the current generation of dancegoers the opportunity to see what inspired Vogue magazine in the 1940s to describe her movement as "a combination of intellectualized choreography and free emotional drive." Nash attributes this sad state of affairs to Primus not being placed in the hands of "good management. Sound management would have seen to it that everything she did was put on [movie film]." As a result, continues Nash, in a telephone interview from his Harlem apartment, Primus "is not [widely] known like [fellow dancer-choreographer-anthropologist Katherine] Dunham. You have to keep your name in the spotlight. Pearl's company went out[of existence] in the '50s and that was it. When your masterworks can not be seen, people forget you. You're just a figure in the history books."

Although there is no cinematic record of Primus's American concerts, she did tell James Briggs Murray, curator of the photo exhibit, "Black Visions: Movements of Ten Dance Masters," in an interview for the show's catalogue, that she found in an old trunk two reels of silent film shot in Zaire. "This is the only filmed record that I know of in existence of me at the height of my dancing."

By setting "Impinyuza" on the Ailey company, Pearl Primus's name and pioneering efforts in bringing African dance to American audiences will become better known, as well as prompt dance lovers to agree with one Primus admirer that she is indeed a "living national treasure."

Author's note: A version of this article originally appeared in the December 22, 1990 issue of the New York Amsterdam News.

On Malcolm X and His Legacy

In commemoration of Malcolm X's upcoming birthday on May 19, I have linked to the following article from theroot.com.http://www.theroot.com/views/malcolm-xs-complex-legacy