Black History Month & Women's History Month: I Sit In the Transition… Waiting

I am often faced with this question: In the fight for more equitable outcomes, is the celebration of cultural heritage months or “identity months” just another form of tokenism? Don’t months like Black History Month and Women’s History Month force us into behaviors that just make us feel like we can quickly solve our diversity and inclusion issues during a short period of time and then we can revert back to business as usual?

Europe District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, celebrated Black History Month, Feb. 19. The theme, Black Migrations, explored the movement of people of African descent from 1900 to present day, creating new social realities in the United States. This demographic shift changed our nation culturally, politically and socially. Photo credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr.

I live my life at the intersection of two months that people seem to critique the most when it comes to celebration. The way I see it, we must celebrate cultural heritage months and identity months while also engaging the work needed to ensure these months become obsolete in the future. I often use the analogy of a road trip. We are all on a road trip toward a more equitable vision of the future. At some point on our journey, we have to stop to refuel, to stretch, to wipe the bugs off the windshield. Cultural heritage months and identity months are those pit stops along the way, serving to remind us to check in on how we are treating marginalized people; how we are working to dismantle inequitable systems, replacing them with pipelines and access points; and how much we are valuing whose voices.

As I sit in the transition, waiting, I wonder how we can better leverage months like Black History Month and Women’s History Month to address the issues of survival for those who identify as Black and women. February’s segue into Women’s History Month should be an invitation for individuals and organizations to audit, analyze, and meditate on their commitment to what happens to Black people, specifically Black women and girls.

Photo credit: Photo by Larry Crayton, via Unsplash.

Black History Month is our checkpoint to ask ourselves:

• What are we doing about the disproportionate impact of infant mortality rates on Black women?

• What are we doing to get more Black women onto the boards of Fortune 500 companies?

• How are we addressing the impact of redlining on a Black girls’ education such that it perpetuates her being pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline?

As a Black woman looking across the last couple of days in February toward March, I see the transition from Black History Month into Women’s History Month as the world’s opportunity to honor the contributions of women that look like me and my three daughters. This is a moment where lesser-known women of the civil rights movement and other Black liberation efforts can be elevated to their rightful place alongside the men whose names our history books revere and critique. It’s time for Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Lucy Ann Stanton, Mamie Bradley, Dorothy Height, Claudette Colvin, Addie Wyatt, Prathia Hall, Audre Lorde, Ella Baker, Assata Shakur, Diane Nash, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, Sojourner Truth, Dorothy Cotton, Anne Moody, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, Frances Harper, Phillis Wheatley, Zora Neal Hurston, Andrea Jenkins, Alice Walker, Miss Major, Dorothy Height, Mary Ann Shadd, Marsha P. Johnson, Rosa Parks, Edmonia Lewis, Gladys Bentley, Ernestine Eckstein, and so many others… to stand and be counted.

In these next couple of weeks, think about what your company, your industry, and your professional networks have done to elevate the voices, expertise, and experiences of Black women. Is your conference bringing in Black women experts? Use the free GenderAvenger Tally app to count who’s on their speaker lists and call it out.

For me, Black History Month and Women’s History Month are my opportunity to spotlight barriers to access while also celebrating the complexity and richness of what it means to live as a Black woman on this planet. Until Black History and the contributions of Black people are fully integrated into our historical narratives, until Black people are proportionately represented as leaders across corporations and nonprofits, until we value Black people as three-dimensional beings, and until practices that center equity and atonement are normalized, we must continue to uphold and honor February as Black History Month. Until all women are properly compensated, are proportionately represented in positions of power and governance, and are valued for their contribution to literally carrying humanity on their broken backs, we must honor and uphold March as Women’s History Month.

Yes, honor and celebrate these months, but do the work necessary so that we embrace a complex understanding of what it means to be Black or woman or anything else that needs a month to remind us that these individuals exist and should be valued. As we think about Black liberation in these last days of February, let it not be patriarchal in its pursuit. And as we move into March, let our Women’s History Month lens be intersectional.

Photo credit: Shingi Rice, via Unsplash.

Finally, I want to stress that as I speak from my own vantage point of what I see is possible, there are so many other Black womxn sitting with me, waiting in the transition between February and March. Therefore we cannot and should not forget to elevate the voices of Black trans women, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people as we do this work. This important work is the continuation of so many celebrated and forgotten women who sat in the transition, waiting for the promise of a more equitable future to be realized for all.

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Amber Coleman-Mortley

Amber Coleman-Mortley’s work centers around elevating diverse voices and perspectives in the civic education space, working with students and educators for more equitable outcomes. She holds a B.A. in African American Studies from Oberlin College and an M.A. from American University in Media Entrepreneurship. A decorated three-sport varsity athlete, Amber continued her athletic passion as a P.E./Health teacher and varsity head coach at Sidwell Friends School for nine years. Amber covers civics, K12 education, edtech, and family life at MomOfAllCapes and on her podcast with her daughters, LetsK12Better. She has been featured in the LA Times, NY Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and a variety of other broadcast, podcast, and online media outlets.