thought and the “suggestions for action” echo practical exercises that Woodson put forward during Negro History Week celebrations, the recommended resources are lacking and problematic. For instance, readers are encouraged to learn about Woodson’s life and career by perusing the overview of “the father of black history” on Wikipedia! None of the available published scholarship on Woodson is cited by PBS and Independent Lens. Aimed at middle school and high school students, the “Educators Guide” provides a host of useful tips for viewing the film, pointing out specific time-codes where the documentary can be stopped and unpacked with compelling inquiries.
The significance of More Than a Month cannot be ignored: it helped rekindle debates about the deeper meaning of Black History Month. Yet it appears as if Tilghman began to dislike the attention that his controversial film afforded him; he grew weary of being at the center of the debate about Black History Month’s relevancy. In February 2014, he declined an invitation to be interviewed by Larry Copeland. “Unfortunately, I’ve all but retired from talking about Black History Month. I got tired, man,” Tilghman told this reporter; “being the face associated with ending Black History Month is a peculiar burden.”18
RESERVATIONS ABOUT NEGRO HISTORY WEEK CELEBRATIONS
There is a concrete tradition of questioning the purpose of Black History Month that emerged decades before Tilghman, Freeman, Dash, and others offered their sentiments in the twenty-first century. In fact, this skepticism predates the establishment of this now monthlong celebration. From 1926 until 1950, the halcyon days of Negro History Week, African American activists, schoolteachers, and movers and shakers in the ASNLH plainly deliberated over how to most effectively carry out Negro History Week activities. In the pages of The Journal of Negro History, The Negro History Bulletin, and leading black newspapers, Woodson routinely shared his opinions on the most appropriate commemorative practices. Beyond advocating that the weeklong event eventually be transformed into “Negro History Year” (code words for the complete incorporation of the study of black history in American educational institutions), it is not surprising that Woodson never doubted his brainchild’s function or aims. However, some within the black community did not always share his optimism or see eye to eye with his strategy.
Ideally, Woodson wanted Negro History Week to become what in 1935 he first referred to as “Negro History Year, the study of the Negro throughout the school life of the child.”19 In this sense, Negro History Week was meant to serve as a stepping-stone to the sought-after unabridged introduction of black history into secondary and high school curricula by African-American activists. By the late 1940s, Woodson still emphasized that he wanted this weeklong celebration to become “what it should be—Negro History Year.”20 Woodson did not discuss the logistics involved in converting Negro History Week into “Negro History Month.” Others did, leading to the first Black History Month proclamation in 1976. While they did not disagree with Woodson’s overarching mission, some black history enthusiasts during the era of Jim Crow segregation wanted his weeklong celebration to be transformed into a monthlong testimonial.
As early as 1932, members of the Bethel AME Church in Leavenworth, Kansas celebrated “Negro History Month” with “splendid programs.”21 Most likely unbeknownst to Woodson and the ASNLH, this congregation held this celebration in March. At the dawning and concluding of the 1940s, announcements in the Chicago Defender, the Chicago Daily Tribune, and Masses and Mainstream, respectively, dubbed February “Negro History Month.”22 In 1950, members of the Monroe Laboratory School in Washington, DC, became among the first to call for the observance of “Negro History Month” instead of Negro History Week with the blessings of the ASNLH. “The ever increasing interest of teachers, pupils and parents in Negro History led to the celebration of Negro History Month, instead of the usual one week,” an editorial in the Negro History Bulletin reported.23 During the remainder of the 1950s, the notion of a “Negro History Month” was sporadically evoked.
In 1951, Negro History Week was observed from February 11–18 and on February 17, 1951, “Negro History Month” by name was mentioned in the New York Amsterdam News.24 A year later, a writer for the Chicago Defender argued that a monthlong celebration would better serve the black community. “‘Negro History Week’ could easily and profitably become ‘Negro History Month,’ for Old Negroes as well as Young Negroes pay so little attention to, and know so little about the history of the American Negro,” a passionate Rebecca Stiles Taylor proclaimed. “Many college Negroes have knowledge of less than one half dozen historical Negro characters of yesteryears.”25 Perhaps in what was a typo, in 1953 a writer for the New York Times entitled an editorial “Negro History Month Is Set” while discussing New York Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri’s support of the ASNLH and its Founders Day celebration.26 Four years later, the president of Texas College, a historically black college founded in 1894 in Tyler, Texas, offered an “official proclamation” designating February as “NEGRO HISTORY MONTH.”27
Others more directly sought to revise and explicitly challenge Woodson’s weeklong celebration. One of the oldest African American newspapers founded in Harlem in 1909, the New York Amsterdam News, served as a spirited forum for publicizing and contemplating Negro History Week. In a 1926 editorial, “Negro History Week a Popular Idea,” the paper welcomed this celebration, observing: “It seems that the public has been awaiting such an idea.”28 Throughout the ensuing decades, this popular newspaper annually endorsed this event with recurring editorials in the 1950s like “Why Negro History?,” by covering local and national events and festivities, and by publishing essays by Woodson in which he enthusiastically explained Negro History Week’s primary objectives.29
During the second quarter of the twentieth century, Negro History Week was called into question by New York Amsterdam News writers, namely longtime managing editor S. W. Garlington. In a 1943 editorial, Garlington remarked that the celebration “is scheduled at the wrong time” because of the existence of other competing weeklong celebrations. Without mincing his words, he had the nerve to call out Woodson (“PAGING DR. CARTER G. WOODSON!”) to change the date of Negro History Week. “Future observances of NHW should not (consciously or unconsciously) compete for attention,” Garlington proclaimed. “Now Dr. Woodson, don’t bring me that line about losing face if you change the date.”30
Several years later in the midst of World War II, one of Garlington’s New York Amsterdam News co-workers posited that Negro History Week celebrations should be refashioned into a more deliberate educational reform movement “for a new world order.” The plea continued:
Negro History Week, 1945, should have a deeper meaning, a greater purpose, and a more universal significance if the war aims of the United Nations are to be anything more than temporary morale-building propaganda or hypocritical and deceptive exhortations … Negro History Week should, therefore, mean a new and keener awareness of the need for sweeping educational reform from the kindergarten to the university.31
It appears that Garlington abandoned his 1943 plea to Woodson as subsequent discussions of Negro History Week in the New York Amsterdam News maintained that February was a logical time for the celebration. He did not, however, totally refrain from criticizing the merits of Negro History Week. For instance, on February 11, 1950, in a broadcast on WEVD (a radio station founded in 1927 by the Socialist Party of America and named in honor of Eugene Victor Debs), the longtime managing editor of the newspaper unequivocally pronounced: “It is time to get rid of Negro History Week celebrations.” Preceding later Black History Month detractors, Garlington argued that the African American past needed to be recognized as constituting an essential component of American history. In an unsigned editorial perhaps written by Garlington himself, his ideas were cited and summarized. “We want American History presented as the total record of the past activities and experiences of all grounds and races. We do not want it presented from any special angle.” The editorial added, “What the Negro does is part of America and must be
