CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY

THE 2011 Black History Month celebrations are about to begin, and I am thinking about a question a teenager asked some time ago: “Is Black History Month celebrated in February because it’s the shortest month in the year?”

I smiled and said: The father of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, launched the idea of Negro History Week in 1926 and chose February as the annual time for the celebration because it was the birthday month of two of the most revered men in black history during his era — one white and one black — Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

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