African Americans and Labor is the very relevant theme of National Black History Month 2025.
Note—Adapted from previous posts.
The 1619 Project, a long-form journalism project developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine, first came under attack four years ago. The highly praised series and book re-examined the Black experience in the New World from the importation of African “indentured servants” to the Jamestown Colony in 1619. It clearly showed that the generational experience of slavery continues to put African-Americans at a social and economic disadvantage and laid the blame for that on the development of an explicitly racist ideology that still lurks not far below the surface of polite white society. It was adapted as a six part documentary on Hulu.
Naturally, the right wing propaganda machine went on a full-press attack on the series and on it’s authors. Hannah-Jones was denied a tenured position at the University of North Carolina after the university’s board of trustees took the highly unusual step of failing to approve the Journalism Department’s recommendation under intense pressure and threats to withhold state funding for the school and a boycott by wealthy white donors.
The 1619 Project was
the most talked about book of 2022 and widely celebrated in Black and
progressive circles. It also quickly aroused a tsunami of hysteria and
and backlash
That was just the beginning of an escalating campaign.
Republican governors like Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and GOP controlled state legislators rushed to ban the teaching of critical race theory after a campaign to stir up a social panic was whipped by Tucker Carlson and other Fox News propagandists and the right-wing echo chamber on social media. Local school board meetings have been stormed and disrupted; teacher, administrators, and parents have been threatened and/or assaulted; captive library boards are banning books.
As one eight-year old observed in the related banning of the graphic novel Maus about the Holocaust, “The people who want to ban this are the ones who want to do it again.”
This editorial cartoon makes clear what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis intends.
Republican Florida Governor and failed presidential wannabe Ron DeSantis cashed in on the hysteria by announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as critical race theory (CRT). He also blocked a new national high school Advanced Placement course from public schools and threatened sanctions of private schools that adopted it.
Television stations are being inundated with protests and threats for airing Black History Minutes and other programing that have been routine for years.
It all came to a head with the re-election of Donald Trump. The new buzz word of the moment was DEI—Federal and private diversity, equity, inclusion programs which the Orange Menace blamed for failures in everything from criminal justice, the military, education, food and energy prices, trans kids in bathrooms, to FEMA disaster relief and aviation safety. He said they promoted incompetence denying advancement to highly qualified—White male—candidates and set races, immigrants, and minorities against real Americans. He trotted out the racist trope the Martin Luther King’s dream was a color-blind society. He vowed to root out DEI policies from every corner of the Federal Government and coerce states, municipalities, public institutions, and private non-governmental organization to do the same.
He meant what he said and then some.
The White House purge of (DEI) programs and workers, begun last Monday, is accelerating at lightning speed. A policy directive notice to all Federal Departments and agencies ordered:
Each agency, department, or commission head shall take action to terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions within sixty days.
The memo updated a directive sent earlier that told agencies to submit written plans for executing a reduction-in-force—layoffs—no later than January 31. The new memo demanded those notices go out immediately. It is not clear how many DEI staffers there are in the Federal government, which employs millions of workers.
It also followed a directive issued earlier this that ordered department and agency heads to close DEI offices. Agencies were ordered to put staff on paid leave, as well as take down all DEI websites, social accounts, and “outward facing media” and to withdraw any plans in the equity and inclusion space and cancel all trainings and contracts. The directive included an email template that called on government employees to snitch on.
The administration also tried to immediately shut down all Federal grants pending investigations into any recipients enforcing their own DEI rules or to other hot button issues like service to migrants and refugees; sanctuary city laws; abortion, contraception, and family planning; transgender health care and self-identification in law and on documents; and definitions covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The orders sewed wide spread panic and uncertainty. Contractors due payment for work already completed would be immediately affected and small providers like day care, home health care, and homeless services could be put out of business. State and local governments feared grants for already started or planned for things like road construction and other infrastructure projects. Social Security, veterans benefits, and other programs seemed in danger.
After a huge public backlash the Occupant was forced to promise that those lifelines would not be frozen. Federal courts put the whole suspension on pause pending review.
Meanwhile some local governments, agencies, and private businesses, led by the MAGA tech bros. and companies like Meta, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Target, and defense contractors scrapped their own DEI policies. Others remained defiant—for now.
The breadth of these sweeping attacks transcends racial, ethnic, language, gender identity, or disability groups alone. The masterminds of these attacks hope that under pressure identity groups will turn on each other—Blacks against immigrants, certain feminists against “fake women.” The need for a united front of all of these oppressed if essential for the survival of all.
Still, it is not hard to feel that African-Americans are a particular target for erasure. The official website on the Constitution ominously took down its page on the 14th Amendment. A long list of recognitions of honoring minority groups was scrubbed. The censors could not completely eradicate Martin Luther King Day or Juneteenth, both Federal holidays because the are statutory. For now Federal employees will keep their days off, but no other notice or celebration is permitted. Trump may have enough slavish support in Congress to get wither or both observations canceled from the calendar all together.
The roots of the annual Black History Month observance stretch back to 1926 when Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be Negro History Week. Woodson, who died in 1950, spent the rest of his life promoting historical awareness in both academia and the community. There was plenty of resistance in the first case and the revelation of an untapped hunger in the second.
In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and especially the Black Power movement of the 1970’s Black history finally began to take hold as a recognized academic discipline and as part of the curriculum in public and private schools. The first Black History Month was celebrated at Kent State University in Ohio. By 1976 President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month, during the celebration of the United States Bicentennial.
Since then, Black History month has spread and now usually adopts a theme each year. This year the theme is African Americans and the Arts.
Some African-Americans think the Black History Month ghettoizes the Black experience.
By the early 21st Century the media and many corporations seemed to co-opt the month in an attempt to pander to the Black community and inoculate themselves against charges of institutional racism. Ubiquitous Black History Moments on television promoted hero worship of individual “pioneers” often without any context to a broader struggle or the experience of ordinary Black people. It has also drawn criticism for “ghettoizing” Black history and confining it to a silo without connection to American history as a whole. Actor and director Morgan Freeman declared “I don’t want a Black history month. Black history is American history."
Black History Month must always keep in mind the sacrifices of participation of the many in the Civil Rights movement like these women in the 1963 March for Jobs and Justice in Washington. They made Dr. Martin Luther King's soaring rhetoric a reality.
I’m well aware of these pitfalls as a White writer, amateur historian, and hope-to-be ally. Yet I think there is still much to be learned if Black History can be placed in its broadest context and include the struggles and sacrifices of the many as well as iconic figures.
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