A Century of Black History Month: Memory, Responsibility, and the Work Ahead

Black History Month was never meant to be a pause from history. It was meant to be a correction. One hundred years later, the question before us is not whether Black history matters, but whether we are willing to protect it, live it, and act on what it asks of us.

Remembering Why Black History Month Began

Black History Month did not begin as a celebration. It began as an intervention.

In 1926, historian Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week in response to a simple and devastating truth: Black people were being written out of the American story. Not misunderstood, or underrepresented, but actively erased.

Woodson understood that erasure is not neutral. When people are excluded from history, they are excluded from possibility. When their contributions are minimized, their humanity is made conditional.

Black History as Living Practice, Not Archived Memory

Black history continues to happen. It lives in the bodies of people navigating systems that were never designed for their safety. It lives in families who have learned to survive disinvestment, criminalization, and displacement. It lives in communities that have carried forward culture, care, and resistance even when recognition was denied.

Long before Black history was named in textbooks, it was carried in practice:

mutual aid, faith communities, artistic expression, storytelling, and collective care. These were not cultural footnotes. They were strategies for survival and dignity in a world that refused both.

The Ongoing Erasure and Why It Matters Now

One hundred years after the first recognition of Black history, erasure has not disappeared. It has simply changed form.

Today, erasure shows up in policies that ignore historical context. In narratives that individualize systemic harm. In funding structures that demand outcomes without acknowledging conditions. In conversations about equity that stop short of accountability. When history is flattened, harm is repeated.

The conditions our communities face today are inseparable from the conditions that shaped the past.

Housing insecurity, economic instability, and community violence are not coincidences. They are outcomes.

What Black History Month Asks of Us Now

This moment calls for more than recognition. It calls for participation.

Black History Month invites us to move beyond celebration into commitment. To ask not only what we know, but what we are willing to do. To consider how our institutions, investments, and choices either interrupt harm or reinforce it.

At BOSS, this means continuing to build pathways toward housing, wellness, and economic justice that are rooted in dignity and lived experience. It means meeting people where they are and refusing narratives that reduce complex lives to simple explanations.

As we reflect on a century of Black History Month, we invite our community to engage with intention.

Read beyond what is comfortable. Support organizations rooted in community and accountability. Advocate for policies that acknowledge history and repair harm. Invest in solutions that treat people as experts in their own lives.

We ask you to stand with us. To support the work. To share your ideas, your time, your resources, and your commitment. And to help ensure that the next century of Black history is shaped not by erasure, but by justice.

Join BOSS in honoring Black history through action.

• Support our programs.

• Partner with our work.

• Share your ideas on how we can collectively build a more just future.

• Visit self-sufficiency.org to learn more and get involved.