Happy Black History Month!

I started this piece the night of January 30th, 2026. All throughout that, day my feed was consumed with the news of two Black journalists, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, along with two Black politicians, Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lyndell Lundy, were detained by the FBI for what the Trump Administration is insisting on calling an invasion (An in-freaking-vasion!) of a church, but in truth was an Anti-ICE protest. Regardless of the case, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort’s presence at the church was in the capacity as journalists, so the charges levied against them are ridiculous on any basis. As awful as this incident and its implications are going forward, I experienced a wry sense of bitter humor at how apt it felt for this incident to occur on the precipice of Black History Month.

Some might be astonished to find out that it’s a holiday that many Black people aren’t the biggest fans of. “You know they had to give us the shortest month!” Why would they give Black people a month in the Winter?” “That month ain’t for nothin but sellin’ stuff to Black folks!” These are among the lighter and most common complaints I have heard throughout my life.

  I have always had a complicated relationship with it myself. I live and experience Black culture and history every day, so I don’t feel the need for a specific month to roll around before I pay attention to or engage with them– it’s most of what I pay attention to just as a natural consequence of the importance they play in my life.

Black History Month is also marked with a host of mandatory awkward interactions that most Black people go through at some point: teachers suddenly turning to you to share about your culture when it hadn’t seemed to matter the rest of the year, shopping center entranceways suddenly covered in Black Power fists and kinaras, white people wearing dashikis and mudcloth.

These aren’t backbreaking experiences to have, but it sure doesn’t make me excited for the one time a year when America turns to look at you as a Black person. This is because lying in the path of the white gaze is rarely a comfortable experience. It is a time that invites disgust and reproach from a country that would very much like to forget the things that the holiday brings to the surface. And what is it all for?

What is the meaning of Black History Month in a country that is actively working its hardest to remove the marks of that history? Its true reason for existence is to battle against the chronic illness of American history that erases Black narratives when being told.

The acquisition of inalienable rights superimposed over the image of the beings they voided to secure them. Because knowing American History is knowing the authorization of the Child Care Food Program in 1975, and knowing Black history is knowing that this was birthed from an initiative of the Black Panther Party, the Free Breakfast for School Children Program, established to respond to the need for low-income Black children to have access to nutrition as a basis for health and success. A central concept in today’s school systems, you would never know that it had roots in the Black community, with intrinsic ties to the story of Black struggle in America, if Black people weren’t sure to keep these stories alive.

You cannot tell the story of Black people without telling the part that this country has played in our lives, and it rarely paints a favorable picture. In just the past year and a half, the Trump administration has made several moves aimed at erasing the legacy of Black people in American History. Directing the Air Force to remove training videos featuring the Tuskegee Airmen in 2024, attempting to get the National Park Service to remove information about the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman in 2025, to name just a few.

This holiday awakens a sense of America looking at you and demanding that you justify why such a holiday is even necessary. Why are we still talking about this? Hidden beneath that question sits a more urgent demand, loud and barely unspoken, screaming at me, “Don’t make me remember! Don’t ask me to care!”

I really wish we didn’t need to. If Black History Month disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn’t stop me from reading Octavia Butler, praising Assata Shakur, or rapping Kendrick’s “The Heart Part 5” like I wrote it my damn self! What it would allow is for America to continue to perform its self-lobotomy, forgetting and ignoring the paths taken to bring us to this current moment. Paving concrete over upturned grave soil and erecting low-rent apartments atop stolen land. Or a strip mall on the Gaza Strip, like in the wet dreams of Donald Trump. Yet we can’t let these fights be relinquished. This holiday, which I have such complicated feelings towards, is important because of what it means to the consciousness of a society that is prone to forgetting.

Lately in life, I have been adjusting to the reality that I can’t face the whole of anything and honestly say that I love every part of it. In order to love a world without being ignorant to the unsavory aspects of it, I’ve needed to accept that most things in life are a blend of the two, and it is up to me to harvest lessons from both. To communicate this idea, I’ve condensed this sensation into a single word that I felt encapsulated the layered and ubiquitous element of this experience: bittersweet. I have spent the past year ruminating on this word and its relationship to my experience of Blackness.

Reading the narratives of landmark Black liberatory figures like James Baldwin and Assata Shakur and witnessing the sacrifice that comes with them fighting for their right to experience freedom. How the sweetness of life that I experience now is a direct result of a deep pain endured before me and beside me. How the bitterness of life is inevitable, and it is witnessing the ways in which Black people face these bittersweet moments that I feel the most thankful and appreciative of us. This thought process eventually led me to a new appreciation for this month.

Chicken and watermelon became symbols of African-American life because after the abolition of slavery and the emergence of the Reconstruction Era, thousands of newly freed slaves found that they were free, but had no capital to establish a new life with. As many of them became sharecroppers in order to maintain, watermelon was a common cash crop due to how easy it was to grow and how much food and hydration they offered.

Chickens were animals that provided both meat and eggs that helped to supplement their diets. Looking at these entities that promote the success of black life, these eventually morphed into spiteful caricatures and stereotypes. To survive in this society is to know that it will seek to twist the best parts of yourself against you. I now accept Black History Month as it is. Wincing as I scroll past the ham-fisted social media campaigns of big brands seeking to sell me a product, and smiling when I land on a post of a Black indie author receiving unprecedented love and attention for their work.

Upon being released, Don Lemon made a statement saying, “I have spent my entire career covering the news,” he said. “I will not stop now. There is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable.”(Reilly, 2026).

 I wish that Don Lemon wasn’t being targeted by this administration, and I pray that things don’t escalate against him going forward. With that said, it also feels like there is perhaps no better way to anoint the start of Black History Month. A story that highlights Black people at the heart of social struggle, America’s tradition of scapegoating and hyperpolicing Black people, and the spirit of resilience and defiance that we continue to pass forward through the centuries. Happy Black History Month!

If you enjoyed this piece, go ahead and subscribe because I will be posting more essays soon! Keep an eye out for “The Bittersweet Project” Coming Soon!

                                                            References

Reilly, Ryan J., et al. “Don Lemon Arrested by Federal Authorities after Protest at Minnesota Church Service.” NBCNews.Com, NBCUniversal News Group, 30 Jan. 2026, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/don-lemon-arrested-federal-authorities-attorney-says-rcna256680.

[Originally posted Feb 1st, 2026]