By Christin Hancock
In the fall of 1883, 72 years before Rosa Parks made history by refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus, 21-year-old Ida B. Wells sat down in the first class ladies' car in Memphis.
The train conductor told Wells that she would have to leave the car - it was for whites only. Wells refused, noting that she was a lady and expected to be treated like one.
Strong and determined, Wells resisted, but the conductor, enlisting the aid of white passengers, physically removed her from the train.
As February is Black History Month, it is worth considering the significance of setting aside time each year to reflect on African-American history.
In many ways, black history is American history. For a nation that was quite literally built upon slavery, coming to terms with this history, as well as the failed promises of Reconstruction and the long period of legalized segregation that followed, has not always been easy.
Although undoubtedly the 20th century witnessed important advances in civil rights, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, historians of African American studies generally recognize that these changes are embedded in a larger social and historical context. Even in the midst of our own "famous first," Americans still find themselves divided by issues of race.
As an historian, I think this is partly due to a reluctance to fully and critically engage our history. When in 1926 Dr. Carter G. Woodson created "Negro History Week" he hoped that this celebration would provide Americans- black and white- the chance to acknowledge the many important social and cultural contributions of African Americans. As historian Pero Gaglo Dagbovie has noted, Woodson believed that Black history had the power to combat white prejudice and restore confidence among African Americans.
He believed that black history had the power to combat white prejudice and also restore pride and confidence among African Americans.
With this in mind, I suggest that we take time in February to consider the ways that black history deepens our understanding of American history as a whole.
One of my favorite historians, Gerda Lerner, notes that history's value rests upon its capacity to reveal social injustice and inequality, but also its power to heal. Her sentiment echoes Woodson's goal regarding black history - that it will counter racism even as it inspires hope.
Through black history, we learn that the struggle for civil rights did not begin suddenly in the 1950s, but rather it grew out of the very first experiences of slavery in the Americas and continued for several centuries.
In the late 19th century, after she was tossed from the ladies' car in Memphis, Ida B. Wells-Barnett committed her life to civil rights, first focusing her attention on a remarkable international campaign against lynching. Wells-Barnett is but one of many who deserves our attention.
In the lives and work of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, William Monroe Trotter, Marcus Garvey, Mary McLeod Bethune, A. Philip Randolph, Thurgood Marshall, Jo Ann Robinson, Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, to name but a few, we find complex - and sometimes conflicting - attempts at social change, revealing a civil rights legacy that runs much deeper than any single decade in American history.
Ultimately my hope, like that of Woodson so many years ago, is that in dedicating time to the study of black history, we will one day bring this wealth of knowledge out of the month of February and into our daily lives, allowing it to help shape our understanding of a collective American past, a history that impacts all Americans.
Perhaps then, we too, like W.E.B. Du Bois, will "dwell above the veil."
Christin Hancock is a history professor
