Bookbag: Celebrate Black history every month

Black History Month began as a week. In 1915 a Black historian named Carter Woodson founded the Association for the study of Negro Life and History. In 1926 this group declared the second week of February Negro History Week, in order to more widely celebrate and publicize the accomplishments of Black people. They chose the second week of February because both abolitionist Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln were born in February.

In 1976 U.S. President Gerald Ford extended Negro History Week” to a month to “honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” Black History Month has been celebrated in the United States every February since.

While February can be used as a spotlight, we should celebrate Black accomplishments all year. There is plenty to look at. Let’s start with a picture book biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall — “The Highest Tribute,” written by Kekla Magoon and illustrated by Laura Freeman (Quill Tree Books, 2021; $8.99). Magoon tells us that Marshall, born in 1908, was named Thoroughgood Marshall but decided in second grade that he would be known as Thurgood Marshall. From his earliest days he was determined to change what he did not like about the world. And there was much not to like in his childhood world of Baltimore, Maryland. Schools, movies, restaurants and restrooms were segregated. Many stores and other places of business could refuse to serve Black people.

One year when Marshall acted up in school his teacher assigned him, as punishment, to read the Constitution of the United States. But it wasn’t punishment. “Thurgood loved learning about the law.” He went to college and eventually to law school at Howard University. He graduated first in his class and quickly became known as a skilled attorney. “He took on Civil Rights cases all across the country. He took on cases with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and eventually became their lead attorney.”

One of his most famous cases was Brown vs. the Board of Education, which he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1954 the court agreed with his arguments and ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional. Marshall argued and won seven cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1967 he became the first Black Justice on the Supreme Court, where he served for 24 years. Thurgood Marshall was a hero and an inspiration, a reminder to all of us that one person can make a difference.

“Born on the Water,” was written by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson and illustrated by Nikkolas Smith (New York Times, 2021; $18.99). A series of beautiful and moving poems tell the story of African American history in this country since the first slave ship arrived in 1619.

The book begins when an elementary student is given the assignment: “Trace your roots. Draw a flag that represents your ancestral land.’” She is African American, “I do not know where I begin, what my story is.” She tells her Grandma that she is ashamed. “Grandma gathers the whole family, says ’Come, let me tell you our beginning. Let me tell you where we’re from.’”

She tells them their ancestors came from West Central Africa where they had a language, “Kimbundu,” knew about planting and growing, knew math and science, “had their own words for joy, for grow, for home.” They shaped iron, shaped rhythms and songs, even learned Portuguese.

Then they were taken away on ships, bound in iron. Many refused to eat, or “tossed themselves into the real eternity of the Atlantic Ocean.” Almost half of the captured Africans died on the journey.

These first captured Africans worked in tobacco fields, but at night they remembered the songs of their homeland, planted the seeds they had brought from Africa, and “willed themselves to keep living, living.” This is a story of resistance by survival. “For 250 years, the people resisted every day in ways big and small. For 250 years the biggest resistance of all was that the people kept living.”

“And because the people survived and because the people fought, they finally got freedom.” …“It is the people who fight for democracy still.”

Words to live by for all of us who celebrate justice and work toward equal protection under the law.

Finally, we are celebrating the great Black folklorist and storyteller Zora Neale Hurston. National Book Award winning author Ibram X. Kendi is working with Hurston Trust to retell her stories for a younger audience — and what a wonderful gift this is for readers of all ages.

“Magnolia Flower,” adapted by Ibram X. Kendi, illustrated by Loveis Wise (Amistad Books, HarperCollins, 2022; $19.99) is the story of a child born to a man named Bentley, who ran away from slavery and established a village of runaways in the Florida backwoods, and a Cherokee woman who ran away from the forced march, called “the trail of tears.”

The child, Magnolia, grew up. When a man named John came to her homeland she fell in love with him. But Bentley did not think John was right for Magnolia and locked him up, Magnolia freed John and they fled north on the river.

Forty years later they return, looking for the three trees that marked their home spot on the river. They find them.

This story is appealing, as all love stories are. It features a strong hero in Magnolia, and the wonderful convention of having the river tell the story to a brook. And why in this world of wonders can we not imagine that rivers might hold stories and might share them.

So much to celebrate! Resistance, resilience, courage, even joy. And we have many months a year to do it.

Jacqueline Briggs Martin of Mount Vernon writes books for children.