Lester Holloway reflects on the origins and growth of Black History Month

Britain celebrates its 28th Black History Month which starts tomorrow. The most common definition of black history is the history of the African Diaspora. Africa is the cradle of civilisation origins of humanity, and that means it is all our histories if we go back far enough. But even if you are not, by common definition, of African origin celebrating BHM shows simple respect for other communities that make up our multi-ethnic and multicultural society.

Internationalists are instinctively against selective histories, against geographical or racial biases and against notions of superiority and inferiority. They reject notions of conquering and enslavement, of the eradication of other people's histories and the burning of books. Black History Month exists, in large part, because of the severing of history and culture caused by the capture and enslavement of Africans and the hiding and eradicationof that history after emancipation.

That is why Carter G Woodson set up what was then Negro History Week in the United States 89 years ago. In an era when there were few black history books to speak of, the celebration began as an attempt to resurrect the tradition of oral history of African roots that had been eroded through 300 years of oppression.

Oral history has deep roots in Africa, with the tradition of Griots who travelled from village to village telling the long story of the land and people.

Black history did not start with enslavement, that period interrupted black history. But I start this reflection from that point because it underlines the demand, the need, for black history. Our history is more than one month, of course. BHM should be Black History Year, and for some it is, but nevertheless marking one month out of the year is a good focal point for remembering, learning and feeling.

In Britain Akyaaba Addai-Sebo encouraged Ken Livingstone, then leader of the Greater London Council, to back BHM celebrations in 1987 because black history was absent from schools. The story of achievement and inventions and the struggles and victories for race equality are important because history as written by the 'victor' will always only ever be half the story.

Far from being tokenistic, when BHM began – here and in the Americas – it was about addressing a chronic deficit in truth and history, adding knowledge to the reclaiming of Black Pride.

Today, as Alex Haley’s Roots is being remade, I reflect on what was for me the central message of that story; how generations of enslaved Africans on American plantations endeavored and struggled to pass down culture in a climate where African consciousness was a crime punishable by lynching.

208 years after slavery was abolished in Britain we now have elements of black history in the national curriculum but, as the London Evening Standard showed this week with their feature about life in Angell Town, Brixton, too many people of African descent are living lives in fear of ourselves, far removed from the bonds of community and respect that existed in the world that Kunte Kinte was snatched from.

The black inventors and achievers of modern times, from scientists to civil rights leaders, are too often forgotten in today’s struggle for survival, never mind the great civilisations of Africa who built great cities like Carthage and centres of learning like Timbuktu, or the opulent wealth built on international trade that marked the West African golden era.

In Britain BHM has previously concentrated on African-American civil rights leaders and inventors, barely talking about modern black history on these islands. Names like David Pitt, John La Rose and Michael de Freitas are unknown to many and the Bristol bus boycott hardly remembered.

Any wonder, then, that awareness of black presence in Tudor times, the African Roman emperor Septimius Severus and tribes of black Scots is pretty low. We may have been marking BHM for 28 years but there’s clearly more to celebrate, more knowledge to pass on.

Inrecent years local councils, who often supported BHM events like African drumming and dance from the 1980s, have pulled funding as budgets tightened. Parallel to this, we have seen more independent events, often put on with no grant funding, explore new areas of black history. To expand and deepen our experience.

So how far have we come? As Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jnr said: “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”

African history did not begin at enslavement but goes right back to the beginning of the human story. And because as a spiritual people – as many of African heritage are – we walk under the gazeof our ancestors.

Not everyone chooses to live life as a dedicated scholar of African history. Most prioritise making ends-meet in this Western society, but black history still resides within all peoples of African descent. Even the odd African figurine on the shelf or the black-conscious books on the shelves are a powerful reminder that there is something to be proud of, that melanin is more than a skin colour.

Traditions and behavioural patterns – good and bad – all come from somewhere. Whether that be traces of the roots in Africa, the coping mechanisms in hard times, everythinghas an origin.

Modern 'urban' grime and Hip Hop lyrics may be too often clouded with materialism, anger and misogyny but musical patterns can be traced back to music and dance that bonded the community, gave thanks for their relationship to the earth and cosmos and cemented respect for women and men, the young and the elders.

Some say BHM has passed its’ sell-by date; I don't think we've yet come anywhere near to celebratingthe African Diaspora through the lens of empowering black history.

From George Alcorn who invented the X-Ray in the last century to Imhotep who mastered medicine in the 27th Century BC, these figures their achievements inspire and ask 'what am I capable of?'.

Britain can take away our black bookshops but with the internet the genie is out of the bottle. Black history is available to everyone, and black history events will continue regardless of lack of state grant aid.

The celebration is evolving and deepening, and becoming increasingly empowering and inspiring. We must continue to deepen it to lay down the bricks of knowledge that are the foundations of the future, moving from one month to unashamed pride in African Diaspora history all year round.