Our History – Month ©

Black History Month is coming to a close. I must say this had been the quietest BHM I remember. Is it me, or has the month’s celebration been muted into the background? The other day a friend of mine jokingly (not really) was channel surfing and asked “Where are all the black movies??” I laughed but silently wondered the same. Not just the movies, but where was the celebration?

I remember when I was a kid; February was on fire with pro-black activities. Just about every weekend there was some type of program, movie screening, or lecture going on and I was involved in most of them. Albeit there may have been activities going on this year and I just missed them, but still I didn’t feel the fire. There was no sense of ‘Power To The People” in there air. No dashikis boldly worn to work that dared the manager to send us home for violating the office’s dress code. I wondered if I was the one that had lost the fire.

This year, I attended a screening of Harry Belafonte’s documentary “Sing Your Song” at a local theater (I highly recommend it!) to which I was sadly the only black person in the audience of 7. I chalked it up to low advertising. Maybe not many people, our people knew about it. The same theater will be screening another feature for BHM called “Rejoice and Shout” I’m curious to see how many of us will be there.

So I pose the question, have we dropped the ball – again? Generations before us fought long and hard to have a specific time carved out for us to celebrate our heritage and what have we done with it? Have we become so self-absorbed with trying to fit into mainstream America that we have let our month become just another block of weeks on the calendar? Could it be Black History Month has lost its flare or have we lost it?

PBS aired a documentary (yes, I am a documentary buff!) called “More Than a Month.” The filmmaker, Shukree Hassan Tilghman, explores cross country on a quest to end Black History Month. Now, don’t get your knickers in a bunch! Before you judge a film by the first line of its description, it’s about the implications of stuffing our History into a month, as opposed to 360 days. 

I highly recommend you check this out and maybe we’ll all be fired up next February (Maybe…)

S.R. Paulk ©