Dear Society,

This is new. Usually, I write to you to implore you to do an unnatural thing (for you that is) – the right thing. I’ve asked you for justice, for equality, for you to remove the mote out of your eyes and truly see and evaluate the havoc you have wreaked. I have made our relationship one of only bad news. In doing so, I reduced myself and my people to a people of trauma, which is how you perceive us anyway when in reality, we are so much more. Still, I write to you today to bring something entirely new to your attention, to shift our purview for a moment away from what we have lost. Instead, I call your attention to what we have become notwithstanding subjugation, oppression, and exclusion — notwithstanding you.

In 1976, February was officially recognized as Black History Month which, to you, I imagine only means one of two things: absolutely nothing or it suggests to you that Black lives are only relevant in the month of February and during no other month resulting in you performatively “celebrating” and “recognizing” us. Either way, those inclinations or assumptions would be incorrect. Instead, I will tell you what it means to me. It is a North Star for me, reminding me, not that I could ever forget, of where I came from and who I am. I find this yearly reflection necessary, particularly in our context today when you make the attempt to diminish this country as our home and rightful place as though we did not build it. 

It is because of my predecessors, because of their sacrifices and victories won that I even have the audacity and courage to take you on, to call you out and keep my proverbial foot on your neck, which we both know you are intimately familiar with and not at all in the proverbial sense. It is only by the Grace of God that we even have a history to reflect on and some take that for granted, no longer desiring to look to the past, only desiring to look forward, much like yourself, but it is only through reflection, through a perpetual anchoring ourselves in who we are at our best that have the capacity, ability and will to forge ahead knowing that we are not islands or independent entities or fractions of people, but descendants of a resilient and prolific ancestral line.

Mary Van Brittan Brown. Garrett Morgan. Alexander Miles. Lewis Latimer. Madame CJ Walker. Mae Jemison. Bessie Coleman. James Weldon Johnson. Medgar Evers. Toni Morrison. Langston Hughes. Althea Gibson. Charles Drew. Arthur Ashe. Patricia Boone. W.E.B. DuBois. Malcolm X. Martin Luther King Jr. Mahalia Jackson. Ralph Bunche. Ella Baker. Frederick Douglass. Sojourner Truth. Harriett Tubman. Phyliss Wheatley. Barack Obama. 

The list goes on and on as does my pride in the skin that I am in and the knowledge that I am connected to them and I am because they were. Just as they were not immovable, I shall not be either. We have endured a tremendous amount because of you. Nevertheless, with no expectations for our survival, let alone our success, we remain a determined and focused people.

I owe the greatest debt to Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History who fought for the recognition, preservation, and celebration of Black History. He created what was originally Black History Week and became Black History Month with the sole purpose of emphasizing “not Negro history, but the Negro in history.” We are not a people without roots, context, history, dignity, the strength to outlast you, the intestinal fortitude to challenge you, or the faith God will see us through.

I leave you with his words. “If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”

Because of the work that began with Mr. Woodson and continues with me, you may never exterminate us like bugs, we may never forget our history, but we will carry on this tradition. We will live out Black History Month every day and exponentially in February. February ends today, but my Black pride and writing certainly will not. The etching of our legacy in history, regardless of your best efforts, will be preserved in our hearts and minds and the eyes of God. 

I am ever renewed and concerted in my efforts to hold you accountable despite your propensity to miscarry justice and withhold equality because of the mighty shoulders I stand on that showed me there are many ways to fight, and this is my way. This is where I take my stand and I am not going anywhere. It is with joy, with determination, and with duty that I keep in touch with you, that I use my voice, my pen to speak not only for myself but for all those who you refuse to hear. I hold these truths to be self-evident that despite you, all men are created equal and endowed by God with unalienable rights. Until next time and Happy Black History Month!

Proudly,

Your Greatest Adversary