Monthly DEIJ Celebrations: February – Black History Month

This is the next installment in the 10-part series of monthly DEIJ celebrations at TAS.

For more information on this monthly-series, please be sure to read the original post, published on August 25, in the Parent Post, written by E-chieh Lin, the Director of Inclusion and Wellbeing. 

• Read about August - Diverse Families & Self
• Read about September - SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African)
• Read about October - Pride
• Read about November - Indigenous Heritage Month
• Read about December - Latine and Hispanic Heritage Month
• Read about January - Jewish Heritage Month

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In February, we celebrate Black History Month at TAS. Since 1976, February has been known as Black or African American History Month in the United States. In 1926, Dr. Carter G. Woodson launched “Negro History Week” during the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglass. The week eventually grew to a month and has been recognized by every United States President since 1974. In 1976, former President General Ford was the first to officially recognize Black History Month.

Dr. Woodson, whose parents had been enslaved, showed a hunger for education from a young age. Largely self-taught before receiving his bachelor's degree, he became a school teacher and principal. Dr. Woodson earned his master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and became the second Black American, after W.E.B. Dubois, to obtain his Ph.D. from Harvard University. After being barred from attending the American Historical Association conference, Dr. Woodson felt that the association and profession had little interest in Black history. He realized that to preserve Black History and for future generations to study Black history he would have to create a different organization. In 1915, Dr. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History which is now called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. The year after, he founded the Journal of Negro History which is now published under the name, Journal of African American History published by the University of Chicago Press.   

Each year in the United States, there is a theme associated with the month. The theme for 2024 is African Americans and the Arts. This theme explores the impact that African Americans have had in the fields of visual and performing arts, literature, fashion, folklore, language, film, music, architecture, culinary, and other forms of cultural expression. The National Museum of African American History and Culture has a digital toolkit to explore this year's theme.  Each week is based on one of these forms of art.   

We invite you to learn about Black History through the banner in the main lobby, next to the clock, as well as participate in the upcoming TAS learning journey, to learn more about different Black and African American artists, some highlighted by the National Museum of African American History and Culture.    

In celebrating Black and African American History Month, I would like to highlight some lesser-known figures from around the world and the United States to celebrate the fact that Black History is World History: 

Josefina Baéz is an Dominican-York, Afro-Latina poet, storyteller, dancer, writer, teacher director, and performing artist who was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to New York as a younger person.  Her artistic life is about transforming the concepts of inner and outer identities of migrants into public exploration of language, culture, and community. Baéz work is centered around her Dominican immigrant identity. Regardless of the medium used for artistic expression, her work examines the experience of Dominicans living in a global setting.  Baéz coined a creative method called “Performance Autology”, a unique approach of art-as-research that helps the participant experience “organicity, alertness, wellbeing, and 'radical joy’.” In 1986, Baéz found Ay Ombre Theater. One of Baé’s most important works, Dominicanish, performed first in 1999, is an exploration of Dominican immigrant life in the urban United States. 

Born in 1925 in Havana, Cuba, Celia Cruz is a Cuban American Singer who, for many decades, was known as the “Queen of Salsa Music”.  Cruz had intended to become a literature teacher but after winning a talent show on a piece interpreting the tango called “Nostalgia” in a bolero tempo she put her teacher career on hold to pursue singing.  Her breakthrough came in 1950 when she replaced Myrta Silva in the La Sonora Matancera as the ensemble's first Black front singer.  After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Cruz left for Mexico and then the United States, settling in New Jersey.  Cruz became the central figure for New York’s vibrant salsa scene in the 1970’s. She recorded many albums and her voice was described as operatic because she was able to move through high and low pitches with ease and her style of improvising rhymed lyrics added a distinctive flavor to salsa. Cruz was awarded three Grammy Awards, and four Latin Grammy Awards for recording like Ritmo en el Corazón and Siempre Viviré. In 2023, the United States Cruz as part of its American Women Quarters Program, which features trailblazing women on quarter coin designs. When her coin is released in 2024, Cruz will become the first Afro-Latina to have her likeness appear on U.S. currency. 

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797), an enslaved man who bought his freedom and wrote compellingly about his experiences, was an extraordinary man who became a prominent figure associated with the campaign to abolish the slave trade. Equiano was born in what is now Nigeria and sold into slavery at age 11. After spells in Barbados and Virginia, he spent eight years traveling the world as an enslaved person to a British Royal Navy officer, who renamed him Gustavus Vassa. His final master, an English merchant in Montserrat, let him buy his freedom for £40 – almost a year’s salary for a teacher, but Equiano made it in three years of trading on the side. After buying his freedom, with the encouragement of fellow Abolitionists who campaigned against the slave trade, he published these memoirs in 1789.  His first book, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, was one of the first in Europe by a Black African writer.  It was an enormous success, selling out immediately. Equiano traveled widely to promote the book and became wealthy from its royalties. Alongside his book, Equiano was involved in other anti-slavery campaigns. He was a founding member of the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group formed by Africans in Britain.

Let Us Celebrate More about Black and African American History Month by learning more about this year’s theme, African Americans and the Arts:   

• The National Museum of African American History and Culture digital toolkit
• Black History Themes – Association for the Study of African American Life and History
• Black History Month
• National Archives