“When I was going to school, I began to be bugged by the teaching of American history because it seemed that that history had been taught without cognizance of my presence.” ~James Baldwin

In 1915, Carter G. Woodson, the second Black man to graduate Harvard with a PhD., and Jesse E. Moreland, a prominent minister, founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Known today as the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH), the organization is dedicated to preserving and promoting Black history as a discipline and celebrating the achievements of Black people, according to the ASALH's website. 

As a historian, Woodson (shown in illustration) was frustrated by the under-representation of Black people in the history courses he had taken. “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated,” Woodson noted according to a Washington Post article. In 1926, he realized the ASALH was the perfect vehicle for change. Through ASALH, he launched a national “Negro History Week” to bring attention to his mission and give schools a focus point, choosing the second week of February because it encompasses both President Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’ birthdays. Schools and communities nationwide responded enthusiastically, establishing Black history clubs, requesting curricula from ASALH, and hosting performances and lectures.

Over the following years, mayors increasingly began issuing proclamations recognizing the week. By the 1960s, Negro History Week had evolved into Black History Month on many college campuses. In 1976, both the nation’s bicentennial and 50 years after Woodson’s first celebration, President Gerald Ford formally recognized Black History Month, asking the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history," according to History.com. 

Since then, every President has designated February as Black History Month and promoted a specific theme. This year’s theme “Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity,” explores the African diaspora and the spread of Black families across the United States. While Woodson died in 1950, the ASALH continues to promote the study of Black history, not only in February, but throughout the year. Black history, after all, is our nation’s history.

In the early 20th century, segregation ruled. Neighborhoods, public beaches, and swimming pools were overtly or covertly reserved for white families. A fact little-known to many white people is that Black families of the time created thriving communities of their own, where they were able to live relatively free of society’s racism. One of these communities is in Sag Harbor, New York. Located on Long Island, Sag Harbor is a beach community facing the bay, across the island from the Atlantic-facing majority-white Hamptons, according to the New York Times. 

The community was shaped by Maude Terry, a Brooklyn teacher who visited in the late 1930s. On a walk, she discovered an undeveloped beachfront area that seemed to her like heaven. Sag Harbor had a history of diversity, its Eastville neighborhood welcoming Indigenous persons, immigrants, and Black people since the 1700s. Eastville had had its own Black church, St. David A.M.E. Zion, since 1840. (The church is thought to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad.) It was a seafaring community, in which, unusually, many wives owned property as a ward against legal complications, since their husbands were at risk of not returning from years-long voyages. All this set the stage for Ms. Terry’s idea.

Due to discrimination, Black people had difficulty becoming homeowners. They were routinely denied loans and not allowed to purchase property in areas considered “white.” But Terry had a vision—she wanted not only a summer home for her own family, but a community where Black people could exist without the burden of oppression.

In 1939, she and her sister Meredith brokered a deal with the white owners of the 20-acre beachfront parcel. The sisters promised to find buyers for each of the 70 lots the prior owners had platted in a previous attempt to sell the property. With the help of friends, they created the “Azurest Syndicate,” as a financial institution that offered plots in the new subdivision, according to the New York Times. The name reflected Terry’s vision of a “blue heaven,” where she and others could find peace. Because buyers were unable to secure traditional loans, they offered financing—buyers could put as little as $100 down ($1860 today). They then recruited sorority sisters, co-workers, and friends to buy the plots. Within ten years, they had paid off their mortgage for the entire subdivision, and created the momentum for two neighboring Black subdivisions, Sag Harbor Hills and Ninevah.

These three subdivisions, now known locally as SANS, form one of the oldest and most enduring Black communities in America. In 2019, the subdivisions earned national and state landmark status, and efforts are now underway to designate them as a historic district.

Read more about Sag Harbor at the New York Times website. Other Black communities of interest include Highland Beach in Maryland, founded by Frederick Douglass’ son Charles Redmond Douglass, and Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, where the Obamas own a home and many other prominent Black people summer. And don’t miss the story of Iowa’s own historic black community, Buxton.

Gladys West has spent her life focusing. When her only chance at a college degree was a scholarship awarded to the top two students in her grade, she focused on earning one. When most of her classmates in her chosen field of mathematics were men, she focused on learning. When she was one of only four Black employees at the Naval Proving Ground in Dinwiddie, Virginia, she focused on doing her job. Because of her, we can focus on driving while our cars tell us where to turn.

Born in rural Virginia in 1930, according to The Guardian, West attended a one-room school. Early on, she recognized education as her ticket to the wider world, but her prospects were bleak. Her parents tried to save a college fund for her, but they were sharecroppers and times were hard. West knew she needed to find a way to pay for college herself. When her teacher announced the state was giving a full tuition scholarship to the two top students in her year, she was determined to be one of the two. And she was.

Her parents could only help for one year, and then she had no money for room and board. So, she supported herself by babysitting, reported The Guardian. After graduating with a degree in Mathematics, she taught for two years while saving for graduate school. Once she earned a Master’s in Mathematics, she was offered a job at the naval base in Dahlgren, VA, now the Naval Surface Warfare Center, in 1956.

The second Black woman ever hired at the base, and one of only four Black employees on the entire base, West worked as a computer programmer and project manager. She participated in a study proving the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune, and then began using data analysis to model Earth’s shape.

In the 1960s, she was project manager for Seasat, the first satellite able to remotely sense oceans, The Guardian reported. This led to her quest to refine our knowledge of the Earth’s shape, which she did by creating complex algorithms that accounted for distorting forces, such as gravity and tides. She published a guide for increasing the accuracy of geoid height and vertical deflection estimates in 1986, after processing data from the Geosat satellite, launched in 1984. Her data and programming created the capacity for extremely accurate mapping, leading to the Global Positioning System—GPS.

In 2018, West was inducted into the Air Force Hall of Fame, one of its highest honors. She noted she didn’t know she was changing the world, only focusing on her job: “when you’re working every day, you’re not thinking, ‘what impact is this going to have’…you’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to get this right.’” Now 91, West says she still prefers to use a map. Read more about West at The Guardian. 

On January 22, America lost a legend: Hank Aaron, who died at the age of 86. Although racism plagued his life, Aaron remains one of the premier baseball players of all time. He was one of the few living who began his career in the Negro Leagues, playing for the Indianapolis Clowns, a barnstorming team known for entertaining, much like the Harlem Globetrotters. After only six months,the New York Times reported, he was signed by the Braves and assigned to their farm team, where he was named Rookie of the Year. The rest is history.

With a career batting average of .305, Aaron is still No. 1 in the major leagues in total bases (6,856) and runs batted in (2,297); No. 2 in at-bats (12,364), behind Pete Rose; and No. 3 in hits (3,771), behind Rose and Ty Cobb, according to Baseball Reference. He won the National League’s single-season home run title four times and was the league’s most valuable player in 1957, when the Milwaukee Braves won their only World Series championship. Aaron was voted an All-Star in all except his first and last of 23 seasons played, and won three Golden Glove awards.

But his most famous achievement is breaking Babe Ruth’s record number of home runs, a feat unsurpassed for more than 30 years. He hit his record-breaking 715th home run on April 8, 1974, playing in Atlanta against the LA Dodgers.

Sadly, his greatest achievement became one of his greatest heartbreaks as racism besieged him. Bowie Kuhn, baseball commissioner at the time, was not present at the game. Aaron felt the absence keenly, especially since Kuhn had also missed his 700th homer, and had promised to lead the celebration when Aaron reached 715. Aaron received numerous pieces of hate mail, and the FBI investigated death threats against him. According to the New York Times, the Braves hired off-duty police officers to sit in the stands at every game, watching specifically for danger to Aaron.

Later in 1974, the Braves team manager was fired, and Aaron was passed over for the post. He felt insulted at not being offered the opportunity to become major league baseball’s first Black manager, a title that went instead to Frank Robinson of the Indians the following season.

On the 20th anniversary of the home run record,  Aaron spoke to New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden about how racism shaped his career's highlight. “It really made me see for the first time a clear picture of what this country is about. My kids had to live like they were in prison because of kidnap threats...I had to go out the back door of the ball parks. I had to have a police escort with me all the time. I was getting threatening letters every single day. All of these things have put a bad taste in my mouth, and it won’t go away. They carved a piece of my heart away.”

In his memoir, Aaron noted, “At the very least, I felt I had earned the right not to be verbally abused and racially ravaged in my home ballpark.”

There were bright spots, however. Charles Schultz wrote a series of "Peanuts" comic strips decrying the racism Aaron faced. In 1982, the first year that Aaron was eligible to join baseball’s Hall of Fame, he received 97.8% of the vote. In 1999, on the 25th anniversary of his record, Major League Baseball created the Hank Aaron Award, given to the best overall offensive player in each league. In 2002, President Bush awarded Aaron the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. The citation says he embodies the true spirit of our nation. In 2009, the Baseball Hall of Fame opened a permanent exhibit chronicling his life. Read Aaron’s full obituary here.

One of the most powerful thoughts in Joe K. Mungai’s book "How to Rise Above Racism" is that humans have the power to alter their destinies. Unlike animals, who live only by their instincts, we can choose how to live. Geese don’t think about migrating south for the winter; they just do it. They can’t choose not to. Humans have a choice. For instance, we don’t have to participate in racism.

It isn’t that simple, however. As an immigrant, Mr. Mungai has a unique perspective on American culture. He says he believes the primary reason racism in this country endures so tenaciously is “generational conditioning”—the process by which people born here “don’t know anything else apart from what they learn, observe, and experience” during their formative years. People raised in a racist society may not even recognize when they are being racist. Mr. Mungai notes “it takes a great deal of courage to start a new and different narrative.”

Mr. Mungai has noticed one aspect of Iowa culture specifically that contributes to the perpetuation of racism: “Iowa nice.” White clients who had moved here from another state articulated it for him. They told him they didn’t understand why so many people here were unwilling to take a stand on anything, preferring not to “ruffle feathers.” Remaining peaceful is such a strong ideal that many Iowans won’t say anything even when they know something is wrong. Unfortunately, this enables racism.

Mr. Mungai describes the concept of racial cartels, a theory borrowed from economics, as an agreement of key people working in unison to curtail opportunities for people of color. This agreement need not be explicit. Mr. Mungai gives an example of being hired for a job where the first thing said to him was, “You must be qualified if they hired you.” The HR person who said this also failed to inform him he needed a code to make long-distance calls, did not assign him a call code, and did not issue him a cell phone, which he later found was standard equipment for the job. While her racism was explicit, others in the organization did not help. By remaining silent, even after Mr. Mungai made them aware of the situation, they participated in the racism occurring there and operated as part of a racial cartel.

Mr. Mungai very clearly describes racism and its effects, but goes further. He offers practical solutions for people who do not want to be geese. The most important things for white people to do, he says, are 1) not to deny racism exists or that you may have said or done racist things, but to be open to learning about it, and 2) to fully grasp not only the meaning of the term “white privilege,” but also the totality of what that involves. White privilege is not only the classic “invisible backpack” of things like being able to assume bandages will match your skin tone. It is much more, including the basis of everyday racism. Part of white privilege is being able to ignore racism and its effects; white people must make a conscious effort to be anti-racist.

Mr. Mungai’s book is an engaging and effective place to start unpacking our invisible backpacks and learning to take a stand. He notes that when not wanting to ruffle feathers remains primary, we forget someone is being hurt. Silence enables and emboldens injustice. The hurting needs to stop. This is the subject of his next book: healing and restoring communities from the ruins of racism.

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