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- [00:02]
A
When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with NYQUIL Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. NYQUIL Intense Flu. The nighttime sniffling, aching, aching fever. Best sleep with a flu medicine. Use as directed. Keep out of reach of.
- [00:32]
B
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for being a part of your day, spending a part of your day with us. I'm grateful that you're here. On today's show, we'll talk about the past and future of the Sundance Film Festival with two writers from the Hollywood Reporter and the co directors of the new series Black and Jewish An Interwoven History. Join us for a preview before it airs tonight on pbs. That's the plan. So let's get this started with an important anniversary. It's Black history month, marking 100 years since Carter G. Woodson first launched Negro History Week. This year's theme is a century of Black History commemorations. There's a host of events to honor the contributions and legacy of black Americans. Get out your calendars, everybody. Tonight the Schomburg center in Harlem is hosting a conversation with vintage collectors about preserving history through heirlooms and objects. On Wednesday, February 4, the Allerton Library in the Bronx will host a Black History Month story time for families. And on Saturday, February 14, New York City Parks is leading a guided tour of Central park exploring the lives of African American residents of Seneca village from the 1800s. And on Saturday, February 21, New York road runners will observe the month with a community led 5K open run for runners and walkers of all abilities. Joining me to talk about the history, the legacy and how we celebrate Black history month is Dr. Kosana K. White K. Wise Whitehead. Can I call you Dr. K. You sure can.
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C
Thank you.
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B
I love that. She's a professor of communication and African American American Studies at Loyola University and national president of the for the Study of African American Life and History, which is the organization founded Black History Month. Dr. K. Welcome to all of it.
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C
Thank you so much. I am absolutely delighted to be here with you on day three of Black History Month.
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B
Day three listeners, we want to hear from you. What does Black History Month mean for you? What does this month mean for everybody? Tell us how you plan to celebrate this centennial year. How has your community observed the month over the years? Who is someone in history that you'd love to give your flowers to? People haven't heard of Call or text us now at 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. So let's go back 1926, Dr. Card G. Woodson. He's a historian, an author, a journalist, and the founder of the association for the Study of African American Life and History, which launched Negro History Week. Tell us a little bit about his background and first of all, why he chose February.
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C
Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here at a Century of Black history commemorations in 1926. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, for people that don't know, he was born in Virginia. His parents were enslaved. He worked as a sharecropper. He worked in the mines and went to school later in his life and ended up, of course, being the second African American to get a PhD from Harvard University, with the first being W.E.B. du Bois. He worked as a public school teacher. So he was uniquely concerned about the ways in. In which young black children were being educated within the school system. Hence the title of his book, the Miseducation of the Negro. When he launched Negro History Week, he intentionally chose February because black families were already celebrating two big days in February, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, which is February 12, because of his work with the Emancipation Proclamation. And now that we have the long eye of history, we can look at the EP as an executive order and kind of talk about how it settled things. And the birthday of Frederick Douglass, his chosen birthday, February 14th. Dr. Carter G. Woodson didn't start the celebration of black history. He just put some structure around it, saying we should intentionally use this week to make sure that we're teaching our children, teaching our community members about our history and about the contributions that black people have made to America since 1926. Every single February, the celebration has gone forth through ASALA, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Carter G. Woodson's organization that he founded in 1915. We have been holding up what he has put forward since 1926. We set the theme every month. Over time, Negro History Week spread across the country. Of course, move from Negro History Week to Black History Week into Black History Month. And it was in 1976, after pressure from the black community on the Ford administration during the bicentennial year, that the White House issued the first official proclamation. But we have been celebrating long before that, and we're here today in a century.
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B
Why were themes so important important to Dr. Woodson?
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C
Dr. Woodson said we needed to set a theme so that people would know what to focus on. He said, if you look at the entire history of black people, it didn't just start and end with American slavery. It's not just about what we've done in the schools. It's not just about what we're doing in the churches. It's about the entire story. So he said, we'll set a theme and everyone will be focused on teaching that aspect of our story. He actually wanted Negro History Week to be Negro History Year. He said we should be teaching it, of course, 365 and 366. It's not just during the month of February, but during that time. He said, if we just focus on one aspect, black folks, contributions to the arts, our contributions to education, what black women have done, if we focus on one thing, then everybody, every place, is teaching about the same area in our history.
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B
Be real, though.
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D
What were the challenges that black historians faced in the early 20s?
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C
This is a very good question, because during the 1920s, of course, that was the nadir of African American history. You think we had come out of American slavery, which ended in 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6th. We had had a fight for our civil rights and civil liberties, which were cemented with the 14th Amendment in 1868. We were fighting so that black men could get to the polls, which was cemented with the 15th Amendment, for the protection of our voting rights. But then we ran up against Plessy V. Ferguson in 1896 for legal segregation. So from slavery to sharecropping to legalized segregation, and we saw our rights that we had gained after the Civil war, after the 14th Amendment, begin to be slowly and violently stripped away. So we call that the nadir of black history. A very dark time in our history, as we were losing all of the gains that we had made coming through the Reconstruction period. So there was a problem with trying to hold on to our history, a problem with those who were doing the studying to make sure the information was transferred from the academy, which is universities, down to the community. ASAPLA is the bridge between both of those things and Negro History Week is that intentional time set forward so that folks can come out of their the academy, come out of the universities, come out of the schools, go into the community, making sure the history is getting into the hands of everyone. It's not just for black people. It is for everyone to understand the true story of the American historical narrative.
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B
I want to ask you about that.
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D
About why everyone should celebrate Black History Month. Why should everyone celebrate thank you for that question.
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C
Black history is American history. You can't understand the significance of the American historical narrative without understanding the contributions that black people have made to America. It's hard to talk about the founding of this country if you don't start with Ivan Van Sertima and the book We Came Before Columbus, which is about people coming over, ancestors coming over from the west coast of Africa into the Americas doing trade. You have to talk about the work of indentured servants in building the free black community. Talk about the work that black folks were doing to help build this nation. Talk about the extraction of our unpaid labor brick by brick, and building up what this nation is founded on. The fact that slavery was used to build capitalism and the fact that black folks have fought in every single war since the Revolutionary War. You can't discount all of the ways that we have contributed to American society. It's not just about people who are black learning our history, because we don't just teach what people call American history, which is really white history, only to the white community. We're saying, no, everybody needs to learn about American history. We're arguing black history is American history, which means it's part of the larger story that everybody should be studying.
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D
Listeners, this call out is for you. What does Black History Month mean to you? Tell us how you plan on celebrating Black History Month this this year. Our number is 212-433-969-22124. I'm speaking with scholar Dr. K. Wise Whitehead, the national president of the organization which founded this Black History Month. How have you seen schools and universities incorporate Black History Month into the curricula over the years?
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C
Thank you for that, because that makes me very excited with the ways in which black history gets intentionally written into the curriculum. We have to be honest that we are up against the wall of white supremacy, the wall that has intentionally tried to erase the history of black people, that our history is taught kind of in the sidelines. It used to be you would get the textbook and then the boxes along the side. They would talk about black people as if it wasn't part of the American history story, or they would teach what they call, quote, American history up until January 31st, then stop and teach black history until the end of February, and then go back to American history as if it was something that separate from the whole story. We've had historians and educators of all different races and ethnicities doing the work to make sure that the history curricula includes all stories. The work has been done to include Women. The work has been done to include people of color. And then this work that was done to make sure that folks from our community were then lifted up and their contributions were noted alongside. That's where the battleground is. I mean, we talk a lot about how the voting booth is a battleground and discount that. I think another battleground is the classroom. The narrative that young people are taught helps them to figure out how they see themselves and help them to figure out how they see themselves in the longer continuum of American history and the narrative going forward. If they're not learning it young, then they don't get to understand how it's all connected. It is in the schools as early as first grade. That is where the history should be taught, and in many systems is where it is being taught.
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B
So interesting. I'm of the age where you learned about they call it slavery now they call it enslavement and the Civil Rights movement, and that was it. That was all you were taught in the 70s, right? And you learned about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, and that was it. I want you to tell people about a piece of black history that you feel should be emphasized this year. Something that they might not know about. One piece.
- [12:04]
C
I love that. Thank you so much. I often laugh similar to what you said, that when you teach black history within one month, you know, you start with slavery. You start with Harriet Tubman. By week two, Harriet Tubman is marching with mlk. By week three, they're getting married. They're getting on the front of the bus. They have a son. His name is Barack Obama. He's in the White House. Like, you collapse all the history because you're rushing to try to get in everything in one month, in 28 days or 29 days. That is truly a problem. And we laugh about it, but we also know as children of the 70s, the truth that's inherent in that. How it was kind of a collapsing and a dumping of all this information. One of the things I'm calling on people to do as a president of asala, I'm laying out for people what I call exercises of daily resistance that you actually have to build up the muscle of resistance and knowledge is a form of resistance, telling people that every day they should learn one new fact about black history and they should share, like, get more people as allies then as enemies, helping them to understand the importance of our history. In a 1925 essay that Arthur Schomburg wrote, he said that the American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future like we actually have to go back and understand history so we can really take back what the incorrect histories have stolen from us. One of the names that I've been lifting up is William Wells Brown. Now, William Wells Brown was an anti slavery lecturer, he was a novelist, he was a playwright, a historian, born in 1814, and he is widely considered to have been the first black person to publish works in several major literary genres. So kind of the first black person to get published. William Wells Brown, his writing was acclaimed for being very effective. He was actually born to a white father and enslaved mother on a plantation outside of Lexington, Kentucky. So when you go back and you take a look at his work, everyone knows the work of Frederick Douglass and that narrative biography. But, but, but by 1845, Williams Wells Brown had also done a narrative called the Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, written by himself. And he traveled not just throughout America, but he traveled across Europe between 1849 and 1854. They said he delivered more than a thousand speeches talking about American slavery and talking about what we should be doing to challenge it to, and to find a way to truly give rights to enslaved people. So I looked up the name of William Wells Brown today as someone that people should go and study.
- [14:53]
B
I'll go for Elizabeth Jennings in New York. She was one of the first women to decided that she needed to ride on a streetcar which was segregated, and her case was decided in her favor. Elizabeth Jennings. You should read about her. Let's take a call. Lori. Lori is calling from Manhattan. Hey, Lori. Happy Black History Month.
- [15:14]
E
Yes, hello. Thank you. I wanted to recognize some contributions by somebody who was very, very empathetic. And I think that's very important. His name is Julius Rosenwald, and he built over 5,000 schools for African Americans, first in partnership with Booker T. Washington. But when and why did he do this? Because he had the empathy because he was Jewish. This is a quote. The horrors that are due to race prejudice come home to the Jew more forcefully than to others of the white race on account of the centuries of persecution which they have suffered and still suffer. But it was interesting to me that he didn't say, so let's give everything to the Jews. He was looking, looking outwards at other people that were suffering more in America and did something about it. And I think that our current administration has no empathy and has much to learn from a person like that.
- [16:16]
B
Thanks so much for the call. We'll be talking about the Rosenwald schools later on in the show with the intersecting histories of black and Jewish Americans. This text Says, let's not forget the honorable Marcus Garvey. My father worked with him in the Universal Negro Improvement association during the 1920s. Wow.
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C
I just want to go back, if I can, just to what the caller lifted up with Julius Rosenwald. And as people are studying his work, of course, you got to think about students. Robach, he found that that was very important. But I think that if you. When you study Rosenwald, please study the influence that Booker T. Washington had on Rosenwald, because that was what encouraged Rosenwald to really address what was happening with black education in the United States in terms of looking at the inadequate buildings, the inadequate books. But that was through the press pressure of Booker T. Washington. And then it was overseen. The Rosenwald schools in rural Alabama were overseen by Tuskegee. So make sure that you're both studying the history and looking at Rosenwald, but you're also looking at the impact that Booker T. Washington have on making sure this comes forward.
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B
This text, this is 1969, when Alice de Rivera sued to allow girls to be admitted to Stuyvesant High School. Her lawyer cited the writing research of Pauli Murray, who coined the term Jane Crow. I attended in 1974. So I am grateful to this brilliant woman who has been unsung. I even exchanged messages with her niece to let her know the part that her aunt played in my life. That's.
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C
Oh, I love that. And listening to Paula Murray, I want to add to that. She's born in Baltimore, Maryland, which is where I'm located. And Pauli Mary and the work that she did to make sure that as they were shaping the pushback to legalize segregation, she is someone that was doing the work on the ground, making sure this was happening. She got her master's degree from UC Berkeley. She was the first black woman, first black person and first black woman to receive a Doctor of Judicial Science degree from Yale Law School. So she was a lawyer who worked with the naacp, and she was working alongside Thurgood Marshall and her book. The 1950 book states laws on race and color, which became the bible of the civil rights rights movement.
- [18:26]
B
Since last year, Dr. K. Government websites.
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D
Have deleted content related to black history.
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B
Then last week, the National Park Service removed content from Independence National Historical park in Philadelphia that referenced enslavement and the challenges faced by enslaved people. First of all, I think we know what the danger is, but I want to hear from your perspective, what is.
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D
The danger of removing this kind of information?
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C
Thank you. I tell people that we have to make sure that as they are taking down our history. They are removing our history. They're seeking to erase our history that we're working just as hard, we're working just as quickly to make sure there's a permanent print of our history. We're taking pictures of these sites. We're recording what is happening. We're using our phones to document. We're putting these down into our post because it's not the danger of the history being misunderstood by those that are currently in school. I'm thinking about generations to come, the generation Beta babies that were born as of January 1, 2026, and going beyond them. If the history is distorted, they will be the generation that will then not understand the true contributions that black people and people of all different races and ethnicities have made to America. They're trying to take us back to what existed before, that we fought so hard against. We fought to integrate the schools. We fought to make sure the curriculum was all inclusive. We fought to make sure that all peoples were included in the conversations. And I think it's more difficult to take us in the opposite direction. Like I'm watching the work that's done. I also know that this is a horse that can't return to the barn. America is a place that is becoming browner. It is a place that is becoming more equal. It is a place that's becoming. Becoming more based in equity. And what we're fighting against is the last gasp to try to stop that. But I don't think you can stop the progress that's been done.
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D
Let's talk to Kevin who's calling from Newark, New Jersey. Hey, Kevin, thanks for making the time to call. All of it.
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F
Good afternoon.
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C
Good afternoon.
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D
Kevin. You want to get some?
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C
Baxter.
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D
Julia Baxter.
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F
Yeah. Yes.
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D
Tell us more.
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F
Julia Baxter. 1935, finished Burnsville High School in Burnsville, New Jersey, cum laude in her high school class. It was accepted to Douglass College based on her appearance and her academic acumen. Upon seeing her in person, they denied her access to the school. They asked her to leave campus with my. With her grandfather, with her father, who was my great grandfather, and allowed her to be a day student only and commute from the family homestead in Newark. Her grandfather, my great grandfather, James M. Baxter, was one of America's first educators of color. Color. So 100 years later, the Brown vs Board decision was prepared at my great grandfather's home in Newark, New Jersey. The actual legal brief, Brown vs Board, is in my possession.
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B
Wow.
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F
She was head of the legal defense fund from 1940 to 1965 and never lost a case.
- [21:58]
D
Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk to Jeannie who's calling from Corona. Hey, Jeannie, thanks for calling all of it.
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E
Hey, you guys, I'm between two classes at Long Island University. I wanted to shout out Constance Baker Motley. Am I saying this right? If they can let me know. She's amazing legal lawyer who went on her own dime down to the south and literally, you know, did trial cases to get people who were just rotting in these jails down south. And I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, she was a law clerk or an assistant to Thurgood Marshall. So she had some serious, serious law cred and just was an amazing. And thanks for shouting out Pauli Murray and thanks for shouting out all these wonderful people who so contributed and their names need to be shouted from the rooftops.
- [22:55]
D
Thanks so much. It says for Black History Month I want to shout out Hubert Harrison. Last night I saw a talk by Dr. Brian Quaba discussing his book on Harrison at Columbia. Harrison was largely buried name when discussions occur this month. He was had a very kaleidoscopic progressive views. Let's get one more call in. Paul. Pat in Montclair. Hi, Pat, thanks for calling all of it.
- [23:19]
E
Hi, how are you? Shout out about Bessie Coleman, an African American who was a pilot and wound up living in Paris. And Carol Hobson, who is a captain for United Airlines 737. Captain. And she's a black woman. And two very amazing women.
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D
Pat, thanks for calling the shout out. Dr. K. This year's theme is a century of Black History commemorations. What's going to go on with that?
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C
Thank you for that. I want to note just very quickly as we wrap up here that Constance Baker Motley was co counsel with Thurgood Marshall and she was the first black woman to argue before the supreme court. She won nine out of 10 cases.
- [24:05]
D
And we have actually a full, we did a full bio like a five week long on this. So people should dive back into that for sure.
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C
Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. So what we're asking people to do at this century moment is to make sure that they're both uplifting any activities that are happening in their area. If they're not happening in your area, then you can connect with us@Asala.org and we can help you to put one on in your area. And we're asking you to really find the organizations that are doing the work that you agree with and to defend them. So we know we're under threat right now. When it comes to black organizations, but black press, black radio, we want you to turn your attention and dive deep into getting those, those memberships. Join ASALA into trying to figure out how you can purchase books that have been banned. They may have been banned from the curriculum, but they're not banned from being ordered and given to a young person. Like get involved. There is no sideline work this month. We need everyone to be a gardener. Help us to plant these seeds so we can go forward from here.
- [25:05]
B
I do love that idea about learning about someone new every day. That is such a good idea. Thank you. And it's such a great idea because, you know, people have lives. They got to get their kids to school. They gotta do this. They may not have a chance to go out and do something, but they can do that one thing. It's really, really important, I think.
- [25:24]
C
I love it. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. We are excited about Black History Month and thank you for allowing me to come on to uplift the work that ASALA is doing this month and that we continue to do every single day as black history is American history.
- [25:37]
B
I've been speaking with Dr. K. Wise Whitehead. Nice to meet you.
- [25:40]
C
Thank you. You as well.
- [25:44]
A
When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with nyquil Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. Nyquil Intense Flu. The nighttime Sniffling, aching, aching fever. Best sleep with a flu medicine. Use as directed. Keep out of reach of children.
- [26:05]
D
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