Lectures, performances and more mark George Washington University’s 2010 Black Heritage Celebration Jan. 31-Feb. 28. With the theme “The New Negro,” this year’s celebration focuses on the era leading into the Harlem Renaissance. The theme takes its name from the 1925 anthology The New Negro: An Interpretation, a collection of art, poetry, plays, fiction and essays with contributors such as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston.
In a recent interview, GW Adjunct Professor of History Adele Logan Alexander spoke about the heritage and importance of Black History Month. An expert on the black Atlantic world, African American history, family history, gender issues, military and social history; Dr. Alexander was recently nominated by President Obama to serve on the National Council on the Humanities.
As part of GW’s celebrations, Dr. Alexander will deliver a reading of her new book Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin, a dual biography about Washington, D.C., couple William Henry Hunt and Ida Alexander Gibbs in the early 20th century, Feb. 4.
Q: Can you explain the origins of Black History Month?
A: They begin with Carter G. Woodson, who was an important African American intellectual in 1910s and ’20s. He got a doctorate from Harvard University in 1912, returned to Washington, D.C., and realized that there was a total dearth of information about African American history at that time. So he started the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which is now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He also started a journal of African American history and a few years later he established a Negro History Week, and that, of course, has expanded into Black History Month and what we know now.
Q: Why is it important for everyone to celebrate this month?
A: It’s important for everyone to acknowledge African American history year round because it has been consciously excluded from the study of American history and even world history. That was one of the messages that Carter G. Woodson brought; he called it “The Mis-education of the Negro” but the mis-education of everybody about the black past as we have come to call it…[overcoming the mis-education] is what we are still trying to do when we educate people about Black History Month.
Q: The theme of GW’s Black History Month celebration is “The New Negro.” What is The New Negro?
A: The New Negro was a term that came into common use in the 1920s and this gave birth to the idea that a whole generation of African Americans at that time had not lived through slavery. They were no longer an oppressed people—of course, they were oppressed through Jim Crow, but a lot more of them had an education and were contributing much more to American history in terms of visible accomplishments. I think one of the reasons we are looking at this at The George Washington University is because an important cadre of The New Negro were people who lived in Washington, D.C., foremost among them Carter G. Woodson.
Q: Is your new book Parallel Worlds connected to the idea of The New Negro?
A: My book is very much a part of the idea of The New Negro. William Henry Hunt and Ida Alexander Gibbs…were very good friends of Carter G. Woodson. Hunt was the first African American who had a full career with the State Department. [With the book] I want to put African Americans on the American scene in a nontraditional way and look at these intertwined questions of The New Negro.
Q: How can members of the GW community learn more about African American history outside of this month’s celebrations?
A: I encourage GW students to continue taking courses in African American history. The majority of my students in my 15 years of teaching at GW have not been African American so I feel as if I have been reaching people beyond the African American community. I think that all of us can continue to find out more, to learn more, to share the things that we have learned and, of course, I always encourage everyone to read history!
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