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There is an extraordinary peace that comes from ceasing to pour out one’s energy to be seen and instead employing that precious energy to fully see oneself. It is a “peace that surpasses all understanding.” What Black History Month is for me now is not what it was. Wisdom has reformed my perspective. I celebrate the hope and resilience of ancestors who came before me, hoping for the best from those who treated them the worst. From the basement of ships and cemeteries of the sea, incomparable faith refused to let our story end with a deadly miscalculation of our inherent value. There has always been something-on-the-inside — that which beams our way through treacherous nights and shades our countenance from the sting of hateful gaze. Some days it is a whisper and other days a resounding trumpet but that something-on-the-inside is why we have never ceased to prevail. Something-on-the-inside is Black History. “The world did not give it, and the world cannot take it away.”
According to the National Museum of African American Culture and History, “Carter G. Woodson, the second Black man to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, started Negro History Week in 1926, hoping to prove our worth.” He believed the dominant culture could be swayed toward equality if they could just see us. Fifty years more of hoping, Negro History Week became Black History Month in 1976. For over a century, African American descendants of enslaved geniuses labored to have the phenomenal achievements of their forebearers acknowledged in Western society, more specifically, acknowledged by Euro-Americans who had never walked an inch in their shoes. Dr. Woodson likely never imagined the year 2025 would show up assaulting his hope. Nonetheless, it is still Black History Month — no longer remedial persuasion but a triumphant resistance to erasure with nothing to prove other than we prevail.
Rev. Monique Crain Spells currently serves as Vice President for Disciples Home Missions, Merger Staff for the National Convocation of the Christian Church, and mother of Niles. She earned a BA in Communication from Purdue University, an M.Div. from Christian Theological Seminary, and completes her D.Min. at Lexington Theological Seminary this spring.
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