Happy Black History Month

By Bill Crane

Noted Black scholar and historian Carter G. Woodson, known as the Father of Black History, was born in 1875 to former slaves.  He worked on the family farm in West Virginia as well as in the coal mines nearby.  He was largely self-taught in most school subjects, and entered high school at the age of 20, graduating in only two years.

Woodson would work as a teacher and school principal in segregated schools before obtaining his Bachelor's Degree from Berea College in Kentucky.  He later traveled abroad throughout Europe and Asia, serving as a school supervisor in the Philippines.  Later earning his master's degree from the University of Chicago, he would become the second Black American, following W.E.B. Du Bois who obtained a Ph.D. degree from Howard University, eventually serving as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Though an accredited and published historian, Woodson's involvement was shunned by most of the professional and trade associations of his day, he assumed in part due to his frequent objection to the non-inclusion of the history of Black Americans or slavery.

Noting that no other colleges would take on this cause at that time, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 in Chicago.  His continuing devotion to the study and promotion of the contributions of Black American bore fruit in 1926 when Woodson launched Negro History Week during the second week of February, to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Spreading slowly, primarily across public school systems and college campuses in or near urban areas, Negro History Week became Negro History Month, and then Black History Month, first celebrated and renamed at Kent State University in 1970.

Not long after assuming the presidency, Gerald R. Ford met with Civil Rights Leaders including Dorothy Height, Jesse Jackson and Vernon Jordan seeking a more substantive commitment by the United States to make a ringing reaffirmation of the U.S. commitment to racial justice and moral leadership across the world.

In February of 1976,  by Executive Action, President Ford proclaimed Black History Month as a national period of recognition and study, as part of the nation's Bicentennial celebration.  And since that time, each President since Ronald Reagan has issued a proclamation honoring Black History Month, up through one of the final proclamations of President Joe Biden in late 2024.

My family were newspaper publishers in metro Atlanta, from a scrappy start in Decatur in 1949, to eventually 6-suburban weekly newspapers in DeKalb, south Fulton, Clayton, Fayette and Henry Counties, along with a commercial printing business, employing more than 300.

That latter entity would print other newspapers, including The Atlanta Daily World, and for some time The Birmingham World, for the Scott family of Auburn Avenue and Atlanta's Fourth Ward for nearly 40 years.  Dad and his family were Yankee carpetbaggers, arriving in 1949, with little more than the car and Jet Stream trailer they arrived in.  Mom would arrive by bus in 1960, with a suitcase and less than $50, collected from friends and neighbors to help her locate her mother, who had left her behind in Birmingham.  When I was born in 1961, MLK, Jr.’s eldest son, Dexter Scott King, and I were born on the same day in hospitals just a couple of miles apart in Atlanta.

And now, Atlanta and my home of DeKalb County are a very much blended and diverse melting pot.  We moved to Scottdale, GA in 2007, not long before my youngest daughter was born.  The census data of that time said Scottdale was 67 percent black, and even now in my home county of DeKalb, I am in the minority, with white residents only accounting for about 24 percent of our entire county population.  And I have never felt more at home.

In my business, our clients also span a wide gamut, from Stone Mountain Park to the Morehouse School of Medicine, and municipalities from Brookhaven to College Park...with each of them and others all spending part of February recognizing the many amazing contributions of Black Americans during Black History Month.

I fully agree with Dr. King's quote suggesting that we judge people by the content of their character, and not just the color of their skin...but culture and history and prior good deeds are also a part of character, and I am glad that we spend the better part of a month recognizing and celebrating that.  Have a knowledge-sharing and educational Black History Month 2025.