Guest Column: Black history is American history

Most people start hearing about history from their parents as they are growing up. Then from your school friends and teachers instructing us in the school curriculum. Then, as you get older, you learn from life experiences.

I was raised in middle class Long Island from Italian and Irish ancestry. When we would say we were Italians or Irish, my father would say that we are all Americans. Our parents brought us up to understand and respect people from all backgrounds and cultures and we were told that we are all trying to achieve the same things in life.

In Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s lifetime (1875 – 1950), he saw that written history was leaving out a culture of people that had given a significant contribution to the growth of America. So, in 1915, Woodson, the son of former slaves, and the Rev. Jesse E. Moorland created the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

The association brought awareness to the largely ignored crucial role that black people played in American and world history. Its founders understood the value of education and the importance of preserving one’s heritage. In 1920, Woodson, along with Omega Psi Phi — the first black fraternity and African-American national fraternal organization — created Negro History and Literature Week.

That week, which Woodson renamed Negro History Week in 1926, was selected to be held in February to celebrate and honor the birth of two men born in that month — men whose actions drastically altered the future of black Americans: Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed 3.1 million slaves, and Frederick Douglass, an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. Douglass escaped from slavery to become a leader of the abolitionist movement.