Happy Black History Month!
I love our culture(s) so much.
Every February feels like a whirlwind for me. Wedged between Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and Women’s History Month, this super short month is when we’re supposed to celebrate the entirety of Black life. What’s worse is that—where I am from—people are contending with winter weather the whole month… what celebration can we have with an ice pick and snow boots, bruh? C’mon, it’s just not fair.
Good thing that writers can rewrite history from the comfort of our own homes!
I take Black History very seriously, and I engage it with worldliness and dynamism. These articles center on the US, but they contest our boundaries, borders, and the labels imposed on our bodies. I hope you’ll learn something new and feel inspired to make history in your own right! In the spirit of #BHM2024, let me share 3 articles that channel the warmth of our cultures:
Artis Lane: the Black artivist who captured Rosa Parks
Artis Lane (née Shreve) is a North American fine artist whose range of work spans from paintings of musicians and Hollywood celebrities, such as Stevie Wonder and Cary Grant, to busts of Black American icons, like Rosa Parks and Sojourner Truth.
Traveling while Black: Looking for the Green Book, today.
We have no African American home open for tourism, but it’s coming in 2021. That is the Maynard-Burgess House,” Janice Hayes-Williams boasted. She is a seventh-generation Annapolitan and a living encyclopedia of African American history in the state capital. In a trip down memory lane, Williams explained that the African American community of Annapolis is uncharacteristically long-standing, with generations-old ties to blue collar work at the Naval Academy and longshoremen jobs in “America’s Sailing Capital.” African American labor in the maritime and hospitality industries is integral to the visitor experience of the Chesapeake Bay.
Who was Arturo Schomburg?
In the digital age, when books are consumed through audio apps on cell phones rather than leafing through a hardcover, it’s easy to forget that just a century ago, the clearing house for reading was a physical library. Even prior to that, public libraries owed a great deal of gratitude to inherited personal collections from a bookish historian or a curious citizen. Such is the case for the Schomburg Center, one of the world’s foremost research institutions on African Diaspora culture, that is a special branch of the New York Public Library. The Harlem-based collection boasts over 11 million items that highlight the diversity and depth of Black cultures around the world, and it all started with one man’s quest to disprove racism.
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