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Since their inception nearly 100 years ago, black history observances in February have served as opportunities to celebrate African-Americans' rich contributions to government, politics, science, culture and other threads in the fabric of life in the U.S.
This themed month, however, is not designed to pigeonhole appreciation of African-American culture and history into a mere 28 days of the year. Rather, it's an opportunity to reinforce the importance of understanding the black experience through all 365 days of the year.
The roots of Black History Month date to 1925, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson and his Association for the Study of African-American Life and History first declared Negro History Week, timed to encompass the February birthdays of famed abolitionist publisher Frederick Douglass and venerated U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
Over the decades, the spotlight on black history expanded to one full month and spread to all corners of our country. That proud tradition plays out again this month in the nation and the Mahoning Valley. Schools, churches, Youngstown State University and other institutions have a wide swath of special educational programming planned.
Nationwide, the 2022 theme, Black Health and Wellness, pays homage to medical scholars and health care providers -- from Dr. Daniel Hale Williams who performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1893 to Dr. Jerome Adams who served as surgeon general of the United States until last year.
That theme is especially timely as the world enters the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a health scourge that disproportionately has affected minority communities.
Clearly, Black History Month has value in the here and now as well. While studying black American heroes of the past, young people also can look up to black role models of the present to inspire them toward greatness.
In the Mahoning Valley, they need look no farther than city halls in Youngstown and Warren, where African-American Mayors Jamael Tito Brown and Doug Franklin, respectively, proudly serve.
Like so many local, state and national leaders before them, both have broken down barriers to arrive at key leadership posts.
"The two of us being mayors has opened up those possibilities and opportunities to others," Franklin said recently.
The observance of BHM also continues to draw attention as well to the unsettling side of the black experience in America that often is mired in struggle, bias and tension. The struggle endures in poverty rates that are three times as high for blacks than whites. It endures in lower graduation rates and lackluster educational achievement in too many black communities. And it endures most viciously in lingering racist attitudes among increasingly small pockets of society.
Clearly, more profound attitude adjustment is necessary. That process can start by better understanding the contributions of African-Americans that have benefited all Americans. It can be enriched by listening again to the powerful and resonant voices of civil-rights heroes of bygone years that have helped to build a more inclusive society.
Listen, for example, to the instructive words of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery, Ala., seamstress who in 1955 refused to give up her seat on a city bus, and in so doing took a bold and lasting stand to challenge the segregationist legacy of the American South.
"Each person must live their life as a model for others," she once pleaded.
Listen, too, to the stirring oratory of American labor-rights leader Asa Philip Randolph (1889-1979): "Justice is never given; it is exacted, and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process."
Finally, listen to the impassioned pleas of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., icon of America's civil-rights movement, on the necessity for the masses to peacefully engage in constructive actions to warm race relations in this country.
King once said, "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualist concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
Collectively, the insightful words of Parks, Randolph and King continue to reverberate today, and Americans of all backgrounds should embrace their timeless messages. Those and other voices of the past -- coupled with today's inspired role models of men like Mayors Brown and Franklin -- can provide renewed momentum toward crushing lingering racist attitudes and toward building the kind of truly colorblind society that our heroes from history so passionately envisioned.
editorial@tribtoday.com