ED | Black Historical past Month at 100: Honoring the Previous, Defending the Current, and Shaping the Future by Dr. Steve Gallon – Hy-Lo Information

As we commemorate the a hundredth anniversary of Black Historical past Month in 2026, this second requires greater than reflection—it calls for recommitment.

What started in 1926 as Negro Historical past Week, based by historian Carter G. Woodson, was not merely an educational train. It was an act of resistance. Woodson understood {that a} individuals denied their historical past are denied their humanity—and {that a} nation that refuses to inform the total fact about itself can by no means totally stay as much as its beliefs. 100 years later, that fact stays as pressing as ever.

Black Historical past Month is usually framed as one thing “for” Black individuals. That framing is incomplete. Black Historical past is American Historical past. The story of this nation—its democracy, financial system, tradition, labor actions, science, and jurisprudence—can’t be advised with out the indelible imprint of Black Individuals. From the unpaid labor that constructed the early financial system, to the ethical braveness that reshaped constitutional regulation, Black historical past will not be an appendix to the American story—it’s central to it.

The sacrifices and struggles of Black Individuals paved the best way for freedoms loved by many others. The authorized and ethical victories of the Civil Rights Motion grew to become the blueprint for advances in girls’s rights, incapacity rights, LGBTQ+ protections, and broader human-rights actions. When America was pressured to confront segregation, voter suppression, and state-sanctioned discrimination, it additionally started—nevertheless imperfectly—to reckon with exclusion in all its types.

As a lifelong educator and a Faculty Board Member of the nation’s third-largest college district, I’ve seen firsthand how instructing Black historical past advantages all youngsters. When college students be taught in regards to the braveness of Harriet Tubman, the mental rigor of W.E.B. Du Bois, the organizing brilliance of Ella Baker, or the ethical readability of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they aren’t merely studying about Black Individuals—they’re studying about resilience, civic duty, and the unfinished work of democracy.

At a time when our nation is grappling with deep divisions—round race, immigration, id, and belonging—Black historical past provides classes we ignore at our peril. Time and again, America has been pressured to decide on between worry and equity, between exclusion and alternative. Progress has all the time come once we acknowledged a shared humanity, even amid profound distinction.

Black Historical past Month at 100 shouldn’t be about nostalgia. It should be about vigilance—about making certain fact will not be erased, diluted, or politicized out of our lecture rooms. Instructing the total American story doesn’t divide us; it strengthens us.

So let this centennial be a name to motion.

To educators: train Black historical past not as a footnote or a single month, however as an important, built-in thread of the American story—rooted in reality, complexity, and braveness.

To policymakers: defend inclusive, trustworthy curricula and guarantee our colleges have the sources, protections, and educational freedom to show historical past with out worry or distortion.

And to college students: declare this historical past as yours. Examine it. Query it. Carry it ahead—not simply as reminiscence, however as duty.

100 years after Carter G. Woodson sounded the decision, the cost stays the identical: know the historical past, inform the reality, and use it to construct a extra simply future. That duty belongs to all of us.

A lifelong educator for over three many years, Dr. Steve Gallon III is the elected Faculty Board Member for District 1, Miami-Dade County Public Faculties, the nation’s third largest. He has additionally served as Faculty Board Vice-Chair, Superintendent of Faculties, principal, and instructor. 

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