Each year, we dedicate 28 days to learning about our culture. Corporations, cities and organizations dedicate funds to promoting Black History, and they should.
After all, many southern governments and corporations benefitted from our forefathers’ forced labor as slaves. And the most damaging thing about American slavery for Blacks was the attempt to wipe out our sense of identity.

They did this by forbidding slaves to speak in their native language, forbidding them to pass on their history and culture, and even by changing their names.
For Africans, names are very important because an African’s name will tell you the country, region, and tribe they originated from. A lot of that was lost with slavery.

So, in an attempt to undo some of that damage, we have Black History month, thanks to Carter G. Woodson. He dedicated his life to helping Blacks connect with their past, because if you don’t know your past, you don’t know who you are. People can tell you anything about yourself and you will believe it.

For years, society told us that we descended from apes; that we were ignorant and inferior. They made movies and designed media to prove this point. And many of us believed them, because we didn’t know our history.

We didn’t know that Europeans traveled to Africa to learn from us. They still do it today.

But things did change a bit after slavery and the reconstruction era. During the days of segregation, we banded together as a people. We had to. We were all we had. We were locked out of mainstream society so we created our own society. We developed businesses and banks. We helped each other to advance in life. But then, segregation came and Black-owned businesses were no longer good enough for us. The Black neighborhoods we grew up in were no longer good enough. We abandoned our communities so we could live in neighborhoods that didn’t want us.

We stopped patronizing our businesses to patronize businesses that didn’t want our money. We demanded that their schools accept our kids, and we turned their minds over to them and they messed them up. And we called it progress.

We became a lost and divided people. We lost our own sense of identity and began to identify with our oppressor. We wanted to be like them. We thought they were better than us because we didn’t know our own history.

Now, we have Black History Month and it is supposed to remind us of our accomplishments, and that’s fine. But what good is it if we don’t build on it? What good is it if we don’t use it as a road map to our future? We need to learn from our history so we can build on the good and avoid repeating the negative, because history will repeat itself. But when we can see the signs, we can adjust so that it does not destroy us. We need to stop just celebrating Black History and start learning from our history.