“If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks, you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.”
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February is Black History Month, and the irony is the man responsible for this long-standing celebration of the achievements of Africans and African-Americans is virtually forgotten in the annals of history.
In 1912 Carter G. Woodson, the son of former slaves, became the second black man to earn a PhD from Harvard, this after earning undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago, then and now one of the top academic institutions on the planet. Woodson, who died in 1950 at age 75, was an unlikely candidate to accomplish all this. Nevermind the virulent racism and scant opportunities blacks faced at the time, Woodson didn’t start attending high school until he was 20, finishing in two years.
Three years after receiving his Harvard doctorate, Woodson traveled to Chicago for a three-week celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the end of slavery. It was there that Woodson and others created the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The following year, the association published the Journal of Negro History. These efforts were part of Woodson’s efforts to correct the slights of textbooks, which routinely ignored the contributions of blacks in the United States and around the world.
Amazingly, this is still an issue to this day. Woodson started “Negro History Week” in 1926, and the concept caught on quickly, so the ASNLH began producing posters, pictures and lesson plans to bring black history into classrooms. Woodson chose to commemorate Negro History Week in February because President Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass were born in that month. Coinciding with the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, it evolved into Black History Month, celebrated on many college campuses.
In 1976, coupled with the bicentennial of the country and the 50th anniversary of Black History Week, the latter was expanded to spread the Black History Month concept to a much more widespread level. The tribute was officially recognized by President Gerald Ford. Today, it’s a yearly event in the United States and Canada; in the United Kingdom, the tribute takes place in October.
Despite the obvious good intentions, Black History Month is a rub to many Africans and African-Americans. One running joke among blacks - somewhat tongue-in-cheek is, “It figures we would get the shortest month.’’
A big issue is that the month segregates and separates African-American history from American history, as if the two are different entities. Author Joseph Wayne wrote in Newsweek magazine several years ago, “One month out of every year, Americans are given permission to commemorate the achievements of black people. This rather condescending view fails to acknowledge that a people and country’s past should be nurtured and revered, instead, at this time, the past of black Americans is handled in an expedient and cavalier fashion, denigrating the very people it seeks to honor.’’
African-American actor Morgan Freeman, one of the most eminent figures in Hollywood, once fumed, “Why would you relegate my history to a single month?”
More recently, as in this year, filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman has the same concerns. As part of its Black History Month tribute on “Independent Lens,” PBS will air a film centering on Tilghman’s cross-country effort to end BHM, called “More Than a Month.’’ It can be seen on February 16, not that Tilghman is thrilled about the timing. “I’m a little torn,’’ Tilghman said during the PBS portion of the Television Critics Assn. “It can’t really air in July, but I really want it to be seen outside the box, in July or August. March would be great.’’
One historian once noted that Woodson hoped that there would eventually be a day that Negro History Week would “outlive its usefulness,’’ meaning that black history would be regularly recognized without a specific time frame. Obviously, that day has yet to arrive. Regardless of how one feels about the issue, we will leave you with one incredibly obscure fact: The first person to discover gold in San Diego County happened to be African American.
A ranch hand living in Julian named Fred Coleman unearthed the glittering stuff in 1869, sparking the Southern California gold rush. Coleman lived near Volcan Mountain, and the creek in which he discovered gold today bears his name, Coleman Creek. 
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