Amid Trump’s Anti-Diversity Effort, Black History Month Takes on New Meaning
Feb. 1 is the start of Black History Month, which for many years has acknowledged the contributions of Black folks to American civic life and tradition with festive luncheons, severe lectures, worthwhile merchandise traces and staid White House receptions.
But a month that was formally acknowledged practically 5 a long time in the past by a Republican president, Gerald R. Ford, is dawning this yr with new significance amid President Trump’s livid assault on variety packages inside and outdoors the federal authorities.
Suddenly the examine of Black historical past — or a minimum of the darkish corners of slavery, segregation and bigotry — seems to be an act of defiance.
“Black History Month existed long before presidents endorsed it, and it will continue, even if presidents do not,” mentioned Martha Jones, a professor of historical past and a presidential scholar at Johns Hopkins University. Nonetheless, she added, “there’s a great deal to lament and even to decry” concerning the suppression of American historical past.
On Friday night, Mr. Trump issued a proclamation that introduced “February 2025 as National Black History Month,” “by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States.”
Adding to mentions of celebrated Black historic figures equivalent to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, he celebrated two modern Black conservatives, the scholar Thomas Sowell and Justice Clarence Thomas, in addition to the golfer Tiger Woods.
Notably lacking was a extra somber point out of the “incredible prejudice and hardship” that African Americans have confronted, just like the one Mr. Trump included in his 2020 proclamation.
This time, he wrote, “As America prepares to enter a historic Golden Age, I want to extend my tremendous gratitude to black Americans for all they have done to bring us to this moment, and for the many future contributions they will make as we advance into a future of limitless possibility under my Administration.”
But as businesses and departments scramble to answer Mr. Trump’s ban on “diversity, equity and inclusion,” these sentiments could be doubtful. At across the identical time the president made his proclamation, the Defense Department, under the headline, “Identity Months Dead at DoD,” introduced in a information launch that the army would now not “use official resources” to mark Black History Month, or, for that matter, “Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month.”
“Efforts to divide the force — to put one group ahead of another — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution,” the division mentioned.
Meantime, federal workers are scrubbing the pronouns out of their emails. Gender identification past female and male is disappearing from authorities web sites.
Even earlier than for Pentagon-wide announcement, the Defense Intelligence Agency, has “paused” recognition of Black History Month. The Air Force even eliminated a video celebrating the Tuskegee Airmen, a segregated unit of Black pilots who fought in World War II, earlier than restoring it amid an uproar.
Asked how the White House would mark the approaching month, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, said on Thursday, “We will continue to celebrate American history and the contributions that all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed, have made to our great country.” On Friday, she appeared to catch herself when she mentioned extra particularly, “The president looks forward to signing a proclamation celebrating Black History Month.”
Every president since 1996 has issued an annual proclamation for National Black History Month, in keeping with the Library of Congress.
But this yr, because the federal authorities — the biggest employer within the nation — scrambles to adjust to an government order that terminates “all discriminatory programs” within the federal authorities, the month is starting beneath a cloud of doubt.
For a lot of final yr’s presidential marketing campaign, Mr. Trump appeared to point that the examine of the darkest corners of American historical past — slavery, the Confederacy and Jim Crow legal guidelines — must be frowned upon as an undermining of nationwide pleasure. Now historians say these marketing campaign speaking factors might grow to be authorities coverage.
“I find it cowardly, the idea that we would shrink from our past,” Ms. Jones mentioned. “I believe we are strong enough as a nation to know that past, to make it part of our histories, to teach it, to read it, to learn it, and to still be a nation.”
There’s an oft-repeated joke amongst Black those that the celebration of their historical past was confined to the shortest month of the yr, however there’s a purpose. The month grew from “Douglass Day,” which was noticed within the Nineties on Feb. 14 — the day Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and a former slave, celebrated his birthday — in “colored” colleges within the Washington, D.C., space. In February 1926, the scholar Dr. Carter G. Woodson began Negro History Week, which constructed upon Douglass Day and the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, which falls two days earlier than Douglass’s observance.
By 1970, it was Black History Month.
In 1976, Ford became the primary president to formally acknowledge Black History Month, utilizing the very best workplace within the land to “honor the too-often neglected accomplishment of Black Americans.” In the nation’s bicentennial yr, Ford related the Black battle for equal rights with that of America’s founding.
“Freedom and the recognition of individual rights are what our Revolution was all about,” he wrote. “They were ideals that inspired our fight for Independence: ideals that we have been striving to live up to ever since.”
Before the efforts of students like Woodson to create a canon, American historical past was dominated by propaganda that was used to disclaim Black folks full citizenship and political rights, mentioned Dr. Kevin Gaines, the interim director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute on the University of Virginia.
History was suffering from accounts that soft-pedaled the brutality of slavery, making it seem to be a benevolent establishment, whereas movies equivalent to “The Birth of Nation” helped gasoline violence in opposition to African Americans, he mentioned.
The scholarship of Mr. Woodson and others started to alter that.
“It challenged those very biased anti-Black narratives that had been the norm in the American historical profession,” Mr. Gaines mentioned. “African American history is at the center of modern American history,” he added. “That point, unfortunately, has to be emphasized in the current political and cultural climate that we’re in.”
Following the Black Lives Matter protests and the racial reckoning in 2020 that sprang from the homicide of George Floyd, a backlash took form. Some states started banning what they termed “divisive concepts,” for instance — as detailed in laws in Alabama — instructing that an individual is “inherently responsible for actions committed in the past” or that an individual ought to “accept, acknowledge, affirm or assent to a sense of guilt, complicity or a need to apologize” primarily based on their race, faith, gender or background. The effort grew right into a broader campaign by conservative activists and lecturers — one embraced by Mr. Trump — to dismantle variety and inclusion packages.
But turning away from the thornier elements of American historical past misses a chance to discover the nuances of that historical past, Ms. Jones mentioned. Even disturbing episodes such because the 1898 racist massacre in Wilmington, N.C., incorporates classes about multiracial democracies being constructed throughout the rise of Jim Crow segregation.
“African American history has numerous examples of these kinds of multiracial alliances,” mentioned Mr. Gaines, together with the Sixties civil rights actions and the George Floyd protests. Implicit within the intelligence company’s ban is the notion that highlighting numerous experiences inside American historical past is inherently divisive, or that elements of American historical past are too uncomfortable for a office to confront.