This Just In – We don’t need a presidential proclamation – especially not from this guy – to make it Black History Month.
It IS Black History Month whether or not the current occupant of the White House wishes to erase that fact. Of course we would have loved and appreciated seeing a second African American president sign that proclamation and lead the festivities from the Oval Office, but the month is here and our observances go forward with or without that leadership.
Let him focus his attention on re-installing his Diet Coke button.
I don’t need presidential leadership to tell me to remember this month the contributions of Libba Cotten – one of Chapel Hill’s most distinguished artists.
I don’t need the giant magic marker scribble to tell me that Hillsborough’s own Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln’s seamstress, was a great American who was born into slavery, lost her son in the Civil War and wrote a book about her experiences in the White House. Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House is still available. When Elizabeth Keckley learned to read, she was probably committing a crime.
Long after President Cheeto is gone, people will still be reading and learning about these two women whose talent and courage brought them to great achievement despite impossible odds. He has overcome nothing to sit in a position of great privilege. Cotten and Keckley climbed to great heights despite people like the 47th president working every day to shut them down.
Erasing their contributions and indeed their history is the objective of Project 2025. Erasing and dehumanizing people of color is a longstanding practice of white supremacists and it’s necessary that we resist it at every turn.
If you have any interest in genealogy, you know that in the federal census before emancipation, slaves were listed as part of a household but never by name. They had numbers only. Numbers indeed – it was the three-fifths compromise that helped the south maintain political power in the US Congress.
In our community we are blessed with many observances of the contributions of these two women. I have no concern that Orange County, North Carolina will forget these great Americans. My concern is that kids in other states won’t have the chance to learn about them due to the stupidity that has brought us to this point.
The problem for the bad guys is that unlike the times in which these women lived, we have so many available independent options for sharing stories, preserving history and teaching its lessons. While the current administration floods the zone with disinformation and “made you look” fear tactics like insane tariffs and cutting off federal grants of all types, we can keep forging ahead with promoting those things that we would have been promoting and pushing back on the things that are straight up stupid.
Resistance to these things really does matter … and so does the exhaustion that results from the hypervigilance that we experience. We’re going to miss some things. We have to pick our lanes and focus on what’s in front of us. Move fast and break stuff is a how tyranny takes hold. The extent to which we can slow it down and mitigate the damage, is the extent of our success in defending the republic.
As ordinary citizens, we are doing nothing less than defending our republic when we insist that we recognize Black History Month in our community this month and Women’s History Month in March and so on. Sharing stories and honoring our history is our responsibility and our privilege.
Next week, poetry.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – [email protected] and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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This Just In: This Month in History Chapelboro.com.
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