Arkansas Tech University Student Activities Board and ATU Black Student Association will host a Black History Month kickoff event on Monday, Feb. 3.
It will take place from noon-1 p.m. in the Doc Bryan Student Services Center Courtyard. Attendance is open to the ATU community. Free food will be served.
According to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Black History Month traces its origins to 1915.
That is when Carter G. Woodson was inspired by the thousands of people who attended a celebration in Chicago of the 50th anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States. Woodson subsequently co-founded what was originally known as the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History later that year.
Woodson issued a press release announcing the inaugural Negro History Week in February 1926. He chose February because it coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
By 1976, the celebration expanded to become Black History Month. It has been recognized through proclamation by every United States president in the half-century since.
“What Carter G. Woodson would say about the continued celebrations is unknown, but he would smile on all honest efforts to make black history a field of serious study and provide the public with thoughtful celebrations,” wrote Daryl Michael Scott, former national president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, in an article telling the story of Black History Month.
Read Scott’s complete article at https://asalh.org/about-us/origins-of-black-history-month.
