LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

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 from Tilghman, a concise summary of the film, resources, discussion questions, and “suggestions for action.” While the discussion questions could provoke critical 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,

Скачать книгу