We Should All Be Historians

       Contrary to what many people believe, historians do much more than collect primary sources and write books no one wants to read. Known as the “granddaddy of all humanities,” history is something that everyone and everything has an experience with to varying degrees. Obviously, everyone and everything has a history, period. Good or bad, it is what it is. People can choose to study history, formally or informally, or they can ignore it and not think about it. No judgement, but ultimately, because we all have a history, and it shapes our present moments. The beauty of history to me and why I am drawn to it, love it, study it for a living, is that histories can harmonize and old histories can help inform better ones. That’s why I will always study history. I also believe that access to history is a human right unlike some people.  

       The study of history is as old as human-kind. People think it is memorizing facts, but it is ultimately identifying themes and analyzing “change over time.” We look at how people have changed, how the environment has changed, what do people struggle with, and what have people overcome and how? Historians look around and question why things are the way they are and how we got here. Everyone should do that always, it’s called self reflection. Historians are important to society because we reflect on the problems and identify possible solutions. It’s a skill, too. We are not born knowing history. You can choose, or not, to study it like how you would study to become a doctor. Unfortunately, historically, people have desecrated the sanctity of this timeless practice. They have passed lies or half narratives for truth, burned evidence, and withheld information. 

        It’s really problematic when people try to keep people’s history from them. I grew up in a Black community and went to a Black school where history was never seen as taboo. We were proud of all that we had been through and were in constant conversation with the teachings and practices of great Black leaders such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, and more. We knew we came from a heritage of greatness that spans time and space and that was just a fact of life. It wasn’t until I went to an elementary school named after a Spanish "conquistador" that I realized something was off in the ways particularly history was taught. Huge swaths of information was missing, and when I asked my teacher, who I had previously looked up to until that point, about it, she told me and the whole class, “don’t worry about it.”

        That’s when I started talking in class and the rest is history. What I am trying to say is that we need to reclaim our histories and the histories of the world in their entirety. My favorite month, Black History Month, is coming up next week, and we cannot settle for talking back against white stupidity. As people have been quoting Mother Toni lately, racism is a distraction. Look up the quote if you don’t know it and look her up too. We must know our stories as told by the people who lived them without shame. History and education is a human right that we must stand on because without it, there’s not much, trust me. Let us all unabashedly go back and fetch and sit with the past. Cry if you need to, mourn your former ignorant self, forgive yourself. Read, unpack, question, and challenge yourself. But the option of staying in these stagnant cesspools of disproven narratives, history books written by bigoted and/or questionable authors, going to unverified sources for truth, refusing to reeducate yourself, and feeling stunted by the limited imaginations of men who were never loved is not it. Get yo Black history house in order. Black history is world history. Anybody who is anti-history is anti-humanity. Continue to ask questions and keep reading good books.

Here are some suggestions: 

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass 

Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance by Nikki Taylor

Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom by Tiya Miles 

The Coming by Dr. Daniel Black  

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward 

Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage by William Lorenz Katz 

Hine Sight: Black Women and the Reconstruction of American History by Darlene Clark Hine  

We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance by Kellie Carter Jackson 

Resist: How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America by Rita Omokha

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