DANBURY, CONN. — For more than three decades, February has been the month officially designated in the United States as Black History Month. Why February? The roots of this monthlong observance date back to Feb. 7, 1926, when Carter G. Woodson, known as “The Father of Black History,” created Negro History Week. Woodson picked February, it is said, because the month contained the birthdays of both Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

The week officially became a monthlong celebration during America’s Bicentennial in 1976, when the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, founded by Woodson in 1915 as the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, expanded their observance to encompass the entire month and encouraged others to do so as well.

 

Western Connecticut State University will offer a number of events in February to commemorate Black History Month, including a lecture and the opening of an exhibit that both will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 4, in Warner Hall on the university’s Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury.

John W. Franklin, program manager for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution, will give a Black History Month lecture at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 4, in Warner Hall. The talk will be free and the public is invited. Franklin will discuss “Black History is American History: Presenting the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.”

“This is a new model for us,” Franklin said about the museum, which will celebrate the anniversary of its site selection at the end of January. “We’re not waiting for the building to be constructed for our work to start. We’ve already been traveling across the nation to talk about the museum, because the museum needs to represent the African American experience not only over time, but also in the different parts of the country.”

During his talk, Franklin is expected to give a preview of what the new museum will encompass in terms of its collections and programming. He said there are numerous repositories of African American biographical and historical memorabilia held currently in higher education, museum, research and professional institutions all across the country and “history is hidden in all these places.

“The challenge of the museum will be to represent the richness of the African American experience and share this complex story in Washington,” he said. “Our history is intertwined and overlapping.”

Before taking his current position, Franklin was program manager for the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian and curator for Smithsonian Folklife Festival programs about the Bahamas and Cape Verdean Culture. His work in these arenas has enabled Franklin to “incorporate the legacies and contemporary issues from Africa and the Caribbean into the United States’ story.” Franklin and his boss, Lonnie Bunch, the new director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, also are members of the U.S. committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Slave Route Project, which in 2008 will mark the bicentennial of the signing of legislation in the United States abolishing the slave trade.

“At an April 2008 conference the museum will sponsor, we will be looking at how slavery and the slave trade is represented in museums in England, France and other countries — how it is presented to students and adults — and we will use this information to inform the U.S. story,” Franklin said. “Many visitors don’t even realize that there was slavery in other countries. The challenge now is that we’re a very small staff and there’s only so much we can do, so we are looking to partner with other institutions. I see our role at the national museum as a resource for our nation and other nations looking at this story. We will become a clearinghouse of related information.”

Opening the same day as Franklin’s talk, “Stony the Road: Desegregating America’s Schools,” a traveling exhibition chronicling 50 years of school integration, will be on display from 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 4, through 9 p.m. on Thursday, March 1, also in Warner Hall on the Midtown campus. The public is invited to view the free exhibit, which will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. On loan from the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, the exhibit depicts key moments in the history of school desegregation since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Mary Lauderdale, coordinator at the Black History Museum, said the traveling exhibit — part of a larger installation featured at the museum in 2004-05 for the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education — has traveled extensively throughout the South, but has never been on display in the Northeast except in Philadelphia.

“The exhibit helps you learn more about some of the background players in the movement whose names are not as recognizable but who inspired the key players like Thurgood Marshall,” Lauderdale said. “To see where we are today — 50 years later — and look back at the steps that were taken that led us here, is very moving.”

WestConn Professor of History Dr. Burton Peretti said there are several reasons why it’s important to study black history.

“When Negro History Week began in the 1920s, in much of the country African Americans were treated as second-class citizens, and it was often denied that they had an important heritage,” Peretti said. “Today, the status of African Americans has improved, and the contribution of black people to the building of the United States is widely acknowledged. These are reasons why Black History Month should continue to be observed. However, persisting racial inequality and debates about the causes of that inequality and its potential remedies also make black history very relevant. In addition, since the histories of other ethnic groups also deserve attention, Black History Month also can stimulate the comparative study and evaluation of these groups.”

Also planned on campus in February are the 11th Annual Festival of African Films and a number of educational and entertainment events sponsored by the Black Student Alliance. For a complete listing of these events, visit the WestConn Web site at www.wcsu.edu.

For more information, call the Office of University Relations at (203) 837-8486.