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Black History Month a chance to reflect

Black History Month 2025 is a chance to consider the ways work and working of all kinds intersect with the collective experiences of Black people.

“African Americans and Labor” is the theme that has been selected by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the founders of Black History Month, which runs through Feb. 28.

It’s a multi-layered topic, and one that allows for study and discussion on many levels because, the association writes, of the many levels — free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary — of life that labor touches.

It’s an especially apt theme because 2025 is the 100th anniversary of the creation of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids by labor organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph. That was, as the association explains, the first Black union to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor. Martin Luther King Jr., the association adds, incorporated issues outlined by Randolph’s March on Washington Movement, such as economic justice into the Poor People’s Campaign, which he established in 1967. For King, it was a priority for Black people to be considered full citizens.

Black History Month was established by Carter G. Woodson. Woodson, who was born in 1875 as the son of former slaves, was a former coal miner and educator. He understood that a proper education was important in seeking to make the most out of one’s freedom. He earned his high school diploma in an all-Black high school in Huntington, W.Va., and advanced degrees at the University of Chicago.

Woodson was the second African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard, before he established the association in 1915 and began “Negro History Week” in 1926, after recognizing a lack of information on the accomplishments of Blacks in American history. February was chosen because of the correlation with the birthdays of abolitionist author Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln.

Taught the theories of “Black inferiority” the same as white students when he earned his degrees, Woodson understood those teachings were false, and knew his mission was to teach truth.

It’s knowledge that is available to all during Black History Month, and it presents an opportunity to ponder contributions in all walks of life, to be educated, to learn and to appreciate.

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