Although Black History Month has passed, it’s important not to let the remembrance and themes pass with the month. It’s meant to honor the centuries' worth of triumph, creativity, and revolution that characterize Black history around the world, a reminder of the transformative role of African Americans in American history, as many reflect on stories both heard a thousand times and the stories unheard, untold and forgotten.
Black history places us in a greater context in the world today, and serves not as mere parables, but powerful intel into the problems of our current world. We must live Black history, not just remember it.
To “live” history means to integrate its knowledge into our lives, to understand the gap between then and now, and to be empowered by taking action in our present day.
On Jan. 19, I participated in the Silent March on College Green led by Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated, held in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his life’s work as a pivotal figure in the American Civil Rights Movement.
This annual march is an important tradition to honor the legacy of King on MLK Day, and allows others to actively celebrate his legacy by walking in silence, arm in arm. The march was followed by a brunch, which included dance performances and speeches.
I found the service to be very striking. Those who attended didn’t just remember King’s life work: we actively participated and lived history by marching in remembrance of the principles that King spent his life preaching.
Participants marched like King, despite the blistering cold weather, because they understood the truth of his life was more important than any inconvenience they might face.
Those who were marching actively incorporated its lessons into public advocacy for change in the present, understanding the great questions King posed to America are questions still worth answering.
It was this moment, witnessing the number of people gathering in the cold weather willing to march for King’s ideals, that gave me a greater understanding of what it truly means to “live” history.
During the brunch, I was inspired to see fellow undergraduate students older than me who spoke at the event, such as members of the National Pan-Hellenic Council, an umbrella organization that includes nine historically Black fraternities and sororities. They advocated for unity, honoring the past and moving with love.
It was impactful to listen to the speeches, to watch the live performances, and to hear the live music, all of which were in the spirit of living history beyond just remembering it. For me, it emphasized the power of cultural events that embolden us to live history in the present.
As evidenced by King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he was grounded by an understanding of history that compelled him to take action against the social injustice of his time. In the second line of his speech, he said, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” This line is a clear allusion to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which was delivered after the Battle of Gettysburg, a key battle in the American Civil War that halted Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North.
Lincoln offered this speech in dedication to Union soldiers who died in the battle. King’s speech mirrors this and demonstrates the role that remembering history must take to live and remember those who came before us.
King’s understanding of American history not only made him an effective rhetorician but also showed the jarring incongruence between America’s promises of freedom and how America had failed to live up to its promises from its inception. He then challenged America to “Be true to what it said on paper” in his speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” and fought racialized segregation, not only remembering history, but like those who had come before him, actively fought against it in the Civil Rights Movement of his time.
The Civil Rights Movement combatted racial discrimination by challenging legal segregation across the United States, while advocating for civil rights that African Americans had been deprived of for centuries.
That is what “living” history requires: a willingness to incorporate history’s lessons into our daily lives and use them not only as mandatory information to memorize out of goodwill, but also in a contemporary context to understand and tackle social issues. In her poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” Maya Angelou said, “History despite its wrenching pain / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.”
This line emphasizes that “living history” doesn’t mean we must relive the most traumatic parts of our history, but rather, when we face it with courage, we can begin to heal history’s wounds and take action in the present to improve our future.
History is something we participate in, an ongoing conversation from the past to the present. It lives not only in museums and paintings, but in our willingness to participate in that conversation, and our courage to face it head-on.
David Asamoah is a freshman studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to David about his column? Email him at da602024@ohio.edu.
