Black History – Not Just a Month

A fresh look at Black History Month

Black History Month rolls around every February to bring very few new surprises about a black history that seems to encompass the Civil Rights Movement and little else. There's so much more to the story ? let's have a look.

When it comes to burying the chains of slavery England dug one of its first graves. In May of 1787, twelve men plotted the end of the British slave trade. Their goal was to stop the transport and selling of human beings in the British colonies. No small task as Britannia ruled the waves. Fifty-one years later, with only one of the original organizers left standing, the task was accomplished, and a framework for all mass organizing campaigns had been developed. The story is told in Adam Hochchild's exciting Bury The Chains.

Back in the US, before the Civil War, lived a conductor on the Underground Railroad who led hundreds of slaves through swamps, and woodlands, around cities and across waters to the freedom of the north. she was a six-gun toting, no nonsense ex-slave who let nothing get in the way of freeing her people Her name was Harriet Tubman, and she was a six-gun toting, no nonsense ex-slave who let nothing get in the way of freeing her people. One of the few adult level books that tells her story is Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton.

Boxing is the Horatio Alger story of the black experience. Young men have fought themselves out of poverty, into wealth and renown, and then, too often, back into poverty. Will Haygood's Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson tracks one of those stories in a way that opens up a fascinating period of black culture. pound for pound the best fighter in history Sugar Ray, pound for pound the best fighter in history, was also a club owner during the Harlem Renaissance who hobnobbed with the likes of Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. The colorful story of his rise, fall, and rise again is well worth knowing.

Sugar Ray also knew the great Bessie Smith who's story is told in Bessie by Chris Albertson, and who's powerful, downright frightening recording of Strange Fruit is documented in David Margolick and Hilton Als' Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. Strange Fruit was a blues song that broke through. It's the only popular song about lynching that's ever been recorded, and I hope it's the last.

Coming up to the 1960's, have a look at Stokely: A Life by Peniel E. Joseph. Stokely Carmichael the man who coined the phrase ?Black Power,? was considered by J. Edgar Hoover to be the most dangerous man in America. As the militant's answer to Dr. King, he probably was. Stokely, self-exiled to Ghana as Kwame Toure, was an extraordinary figure, and this book does him justice.

Finally, in case you missed it, dig into Race Matters by the brilliant Cornel West. Race Matters lays it all on the line, and when you're done your thinking about all things racial will have changed, and you'll understand how Black Lives Matter is the continuum of a long, long struggle.

Have a great month.

Read more by Richard Wells