Anti-racism monthly

Black History Month

Black History Month was created in 1926 in the United States, when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History announced the second week of February to be "Negro History Week". This week was chosen because it coincided with the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and that of Frederick Douglass, both of which dates Black communities had celebrated together since the late 19th century. This week was created to give recognition and importance to teaching the cultural significance of the history of Black Americans. For Woodson and the Black communities in the US, it was incredibly important to educate and bring awareness to the history of a group of people that had been overlooked at the time. Negro History Week grew in popularity throughout the following decades. It built up to what we know as Black History month today. Black History Month was first proposed by Black educators and the Black United Students at Kent State University in February 1969. Six years later, Black History Month was being celebrated across the country. It was then recognized by President Gerald Ford in 1976.

Black History Month was created to focus attention on the contributions of African Americans to the United States. Woodson hoped that “time would come when Negro History Week would be unnecessary” and that people would “willingly recognize the contributions of Black Americans as a legitimate and essential part of the history of this country.” Taking Woodson's vision as our own, we can get rid of the oversimplified and condensed version of Black history we now know. We can embrace the entirety of Black history as a part of our national history and appreciate the accomplishments of minority communities in a culture that overlooks their contributions.

We should strive to make schools teach Black history more thoroughly so that the need for Black History month would be less and we could attain the complete history of the US instead of the whitewashed version we have now. As a result of a more inclusive and diverse curriculum, Black history can be celebrated every day as an essential part of American history, instead of in a fixed and isolated timeframe of one month.

BIPOC in Cuisine

Activist, philanthropist, celebrity chef, and a New York Times Best Selling Author, Padma Lakshmi is this month’s focus for BIPOC in Cuisine! Since 2006, Lakshmi has hosted the American reality competition series Top Chef, becoming a dominating force in the food industry. As of 2020, the entrepreneur executively produced the Hulu original Taste the Nation, traveling across America to explore food culture and its diversity. Some of her most notable books include the Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs and her memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate. Just last year, Lakshmi published “Tomatoes for Neela,” a children’s book about family cooking and treasured recipes. Find her recipes here!