BY: BOOKMANS

This February, Bookmans highlights Black History Month with in-store displays featuring the individuals, events, and cultural benchmarks of black American history and its continued importance in American history.

"We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice."
- Carter Woodson on founding Negro History Week, 1926

This February, Bookmans highlights the invaluable contributions of black Americans to our nation's history with in-store displays and signage in honor of Black History Month. Founded in 1926 by scholar Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Negro History Week marked the birthdays of two of black history's most influential and prominent figures - Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. In 1976, the organization Afro-Americans for the Study of Afro-American Life and History expanded Negro History Week into a month-long celebration of black history to coincide with America's bicentennial.

From the rich literary contributions of Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou, to the groundbreaking sports figures of Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jordan, and social revolutionaries Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks, Black History Month is the time to recognize and appreciate the social and cultural heritage of blacks in America and extend that understanding into America's history on the whole. It is also a time to reflect on the harms of racial prejudice and how a society is better for overcoming hate and oppression.

To learn more about Black History Month:
Black History Information and Resources
The Freeman Institute Black History Collection
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Center for Contemporary Black History