Black History Reminds Us

We gon’ be alright

LaShawn Routé Chatmon, Executive Director
February 2025

Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.
bell hooks

It can feel like a dark time. The recent barrage of Executive Orders attempting to erode equal protections, undermine trust in our public institutions, and target our most vulnerable neighbors and communities are a distressing signal of the struggle ahead.

But even when it is dark outside the sun is always in the sky.

This February, we join in the celebration of Black History. I cannot think of a more important time to remember, acknowledge and amplify the role that Black people, Black culture, and Black genius and ingenuity have played in the making of our country, its institutions and the shaping of our democracy. In the words of US Senator and Senior Pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church Raphael Warnock,

“Black history is American history - and Black History Month is a time of celebrating the victories and steadfast resilience of generations of Black Americans who’ve accomplished incredible feats and bent the arc of the moral universe.”

Octavia Butler reminds us that “to study history is to study humanity” – to learn lessons from the times we have behaved both monstrously and magnificently. Our country's continued failure to reconcile and heal from our own storied history could leave us destined to repeat it. Yet, thoughtful study of the history of Black Americans reveals that our struggles for freedom, civil and human rights have always been rooted in an understanding of our shared humanity and inherent interconnectedness. There is knowledge, resilience and power woven in the tapestry of Black history, a benefit available to every American - an opportunity, as Imani Perry writes, to feel not only the pain, but the beauty of being human.  

Past struggles for freedom and justice modeled multiracial, multi-cultural, intergenerational solidarity, coalition-building and individual and collective action. Those struggles demanded that the espoused ideals and promises of The Constitution's Preamble – “We the People” – means All the People. There are guides in our history that we can turn to in our work today: we must remain steadfast in our vision and commitment to manifest a multiracial, pluralistic democracy that works for all of us. Building a bigger we by expanding our community, concern and care for one another is the strongest antidote to division and fracture.  

This moment requires us to connect our shared history with our shared destiny. When we see, engage, and act in ways that value one another's full humanity, we create the conditions where everyone can belong and thrive.

Black History is a testimony; a proclamation of a people who keep their eyes on the prize across space and time, who hold onto visions and dreams of freedom, safety and wellbeing, and do so with unyielding faith, love, style, creativity and brilliance. Black History is the seed from which Black Futures emerge, and “Blackness is an immense and defiant joy.”

All’s my life I had to fight…
But if God got us, then we gon’ be alright.

Kendrick Lamar
[adapted from Alice Walker, The Color Purple]