WHAT WAS meant to create awareness of the achievements and history of black persons in the United States of America, has steadily grown to become a major event in the calendar of countries worldwide.
Observations of Black History Month started in 1926 when U.S. educator Dr. Carter G. Woodson conceptualised and promoted the idea as "Negro History Week" in schools.
He chose a week in February to coincide with the birth month of two heroes, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, but for Jamaicans the month has added significance including the birthdate of reggae legend Robert Nesta Marley.
"Born to parents who were former slaves, Woodson spent his childhood working in the Kentucky coal mines and enrolled in high school at age twenty. He graduated within two years and later went on to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, but was disturbed to find in his studies that history books largely ignored the black American population," one Web site reports. Later on in the early 1960s the word 'Negro' was replaced with Black and African American.
The week of celebration was then called Black History Week. In 1976, Negro History Week became Black History Month in the U.S.
Jamaica joins the U.S in celebrating February, but in England, Black History Month has been observed in October since 1987, when it became part of the African Jubilee Year and the Marcus Garvey Centennial Celebration.
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
UNESCO-Jamaica Task Force
Jan. 27-Feb 12 Mutual Life Gallery, Oxford Road Art exhibition: 'African Space Program'
Jan. 24-Feb 19 UWI Library, exhibition
on Haiti
Feb. 11 National Library of Jamaica
exhibition:
The Jamaica Haiti Connections. BNS- Duke & Port Royal Streets
Feb. Jamaica Reparations Movement tribute
to the Haitian Revolution, Lucea, Hanover
Feb. 12 Liberty Hall, lecture by Prof. Rupert Lewis and launch of Garvey CD
Feb. 15 Fi Wi Sinting - Afro-Jamaican cultural expo, Spring Garden, Portland
