After all, some black people were the ones most baffled by Dash’s comments, not whites. While it is easy to dismiss Dash’s remarks, her brief observations did catapult Black History Month into the realm of social media and popular discourse, especially within black cyber communities. Yet, as Dash herself pointed out on her home page on patheos.com, she was not the first African American thespian to question the existence and purpose of Black History Month in the twenty-first century.
In a by now famous 2005 interview with Mike Wallace on the well-known news magazine 60 Minutes, Morgan Freeman called Black History Month “ridiculous.” Similar to Dash, Freeman whipped up the popular argument that there was not a month specifically designated to acknowledge white Americans’ historical contributions (a “White History Month”). In highlighting this, both failed to acknowledge that in US popular culture and educational institutions white American history and culture is predominantly used as the universal frame of reference, that white American historical icons are routinely venerated. As Afrocentrist Molefi Kete Asante has repeatedly stressed, notions of Eurocentric and white American universality have been largely accepted in US culture. Take, for instance, the images that appear on US currency. Though Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver appeared on US commemorative coins during the 1940s and in 2009 Duke Ellington became the first African American to be featured by himself on a US coin, history was made when it was announced that Harriet Tubman will become the first African American woman to be featured on a US paper note. A writer for the New York Times called this “the most sweeping and historically symbolic makeover of American currency in a century.”12
Black History Month, in essence, exists because it is part of a time-honored tradition. It persists by virtue of this and because of the continued lack of consistent attention given to blacks’ influence on American history and culture, especially in educational systems. If blacks’ contributions and concerns were taken up in a manner that was at least proportional to their impact on American life, then, theoretically, Black History Month would no longer be needed.
Moreover, those who bemoan the absence of a “white history month,” fail to recognize the truism that in the United States “every month is white history month” and that ten other groups of people have formally been awarded months: Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month (May); National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 through October 15); Irish American Heritage Month (March); Women’s History Month (March); Older Americans’ Month (May); Jewish American Heritage Month (May); Gay and Lesbian Pride Month (June); Caribbean-American Heritage Month (June); Italian American Heritage Month (October); and National American Indian Heritage Month (November 1990).
Why aren’t these months, and others, contested in the ways that Black History Month is? A similar trend can be noticed with the critiques on affirmative action. This now passé practice is often presented to the American public as a “black thing,” as if other groups have not benefitted from these policies.
Like others before him, and unlike Dash, Freeman called for an end to Black History Month because he believed that it denigrated the contributions that African Americans had made to US history and culture. “You’re going to relegate my history to a month? … I don’t want a Black History Month,” Freeman declared. “Black history is American history.”13 Though Freeman’s comments triggered a social media frenzy, his thoughts were not original, evoking the age-old and prevailing contributionist and patriotic tradition of black thought and historiography that dates back to the nineteenth century. Frederick Douglass’s steadfast belief in black contributionism was at the center of his consistent opposition—except at the outset of the Civil War—to the emigration and colonization movements during the nineteenth century. In his lengthy address “Lessons of the Hour” (1894), he underscored: “The native land of the American negro is America. His bones, his muscles, his sinews, are all American. His ancestors for two hundred and seventy years have lived, and labored, and died on America soil.”14 Echoing Douglass, countless twentieth-century black historians and activists argued that American history is incomplete without the contributions of African Americans. For decades, African Americans have argued that one month is “not enough” to recognize black American history. Negro History Week founder Carter G. Woodson himself knew that one week was not sufficient for memorializing the black past.
The beliefs of Freeman, Dash, and others that Black History Month segregates black people has been taken up by conservative spokespersons who see little value in the observance and create calculated arguments to jettison it. Take, for instance, an article published in the conservative semi-monthly magazine the National Review in 2013 entitled “Against Black History Month” by staff writer and author of the popular The Conservatarian Manifesto (2016). He begins by glossing over why Woodson created Negro History Week and then fast forwards to the present, marveling at how much things have supposedly changed. For him, unlike during Woodson’s times, black history in the age of Obama was no longer snubbed in American society. He asserts that Freeman made his case “perfectly” and argues that Black History Month contributes to the swelling separation of the black past from the American experience, counters the “melting-pot” ideal, further segregates black people, is essentially antiquated, and, in the end, does nothing to address the “racial problems in America.”15 His pie-in-the-sky solution is to magically have curriculums in K-12 schools incorporate the black experience. If only the remedy were this simple!
Freeman’s comments made an impression beyond conservatives. In mid-February 2012, Shukree Tilghman’s documentary More Than a Month premiered on Independent Lens. The then twenty-nine-year-old filmmaker told one interviewer that Freeman’s sentiments “resonated” so much with him that he was “determined to set out to find the truth about Black History Month.” According to Tilghman, one fundamental question guides his documentary: “What does it mean that we have a Black History Month?” Like others before him, he sought to challenge Americans to “question why black history is taught as if it is somehow separate from American history.” He carried on, “I hope as a country, we can imagine an America where Black History Month isn’t necessary.”16 The existence of Black History Month, in Tilghman’s estimation, contributes to the othering of African Americans.
Approximately one hour in length, Tilghman’s film begins in 2010 with him traveling throughout the East Coast interviewing a range of people—from his parents to history professors and educators to high school students. One of the most compelling scenes from the documentary occurs when Tilghman, in the tradition of comedy sketches from The Chris Rock Show, engages with the public in the streets, walking around wearing a sandwich board sign with “END BLACK HISTORY MONTH” on the front and “BLACK HISTORY IS AMERICAN HISTORY” on the back. Tilghman’s overarching argument is similar to earlier ones—that African American history is American history and should not be separated from mainstream representations of American history. Despite his recycling of conventional beliefs still lingering in the collective conscience of much of black America, More Than a Month is the first major film that focused on Black History Month and consequently received plenty of attention.
Not only was the documentary screened at various venues during 2012 Black History Month celebrations, but Tilghman was interviewed numerous times and leading newspapers reviewed the documentary. In February 2012, the New York Times published a critical review of Tilghman’s opus. The reviewer dubbed the documentary “meandering and indecisive” with such a “waffly ending that you can no longer tell whether he favors or opposes Black History Month.” For this critic, Tilghman is “never less than a genial guide to the thorny question he raises from the start.”17
Obviously, PBS and Independent Lens viewed Tilghman’s work differently. For the sponsors and producers, More Than a Month is a useful teaching tool. Pedagogical devices—a “Discussion Guide” and “Educator Guide: Viewing and Discussion Guide”—were offered as supplements. The “Discussion Guide” includes a statement
