Over the years, suggestions have been made to rename Black History month, “Black American History Month” because of the focus on Black American history.
American black history was the original concept
To be fair, it was the intent of American historian Carter G. Woodson to highlight Black American History when he founded Negro History Week in 1926. The week later evolved into Black History Month, but Black American history remained the focus.
However, the history of black people in the Caribbean and the USA is intricately woven in many instances.
Black history originated in the Caribbean.
While African American history is usually traced back to the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619, enslaved people were brought from Africa to Spanish-occupied West Indian Islands before then. As the British seized ownership of the islands and focused on the development of sugar plantations, the Africa-to-West Indies slave trade intensified. Some of these enslaved people, notably in Barbados, obtained freedom quickly and migrated to regions in Virginia and Massachusetts in the US to create the initial nucleus of free blacks in America.
While enslaved Black people in America, particularly the southern states, struggled with the atrocities of slavery, spawning a civil war between the northern and southern states, blacks in the Caribbean were seizing their freedom.
After a thirteen-year rebellion, enslaved people led by Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines completed the Haitian Revolution against the French to create the first western black independent nation in 1804. And, in Jamaica, Blacks like Sam Sharp, Paul Bogle, and Nanny of the Maroons strived to ensure the British emancipated slavery in Jamaica, and the rest of the Caribbean, by the 1860s.
Influence on enslaved Americans.
News of successful slave revolutions and formerly enslaved people in the Caribbean influenced similar revolutions and, ultimately, emancipation in the US.
While blacks suffered humiliation from racial segregation and suppression in the post-slavery era, Blacks in the Caribbean established themselves in their respective countries and gradually seized power from the British.
Black self-governance.
In the early 1940s, several charismatic and intellectual leaders like Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley in Jamaica and Eric Williams in Trinidad and Tobago formed political parties, which represented the rights of the people against British rule. This led to local self-government in the 1950s, the establishment of a West Indies Federation in 1959, and after the break up of that federation, the birth of independent political nations in the 1960s onwards.
The solidification of Blacks in the Caribbean as their own political and economic leaders did not deter Caribbean nationals from migrating to the US. While these migrants shunned the segregated south, they were attracted by opportunities presented in New York, where they perpetuated the Caribbean influence.
Caribbean influence in New York.
From the mid-1930s, Caribbean nationals like Marcus Garvey played a pivotal role in sowing the seeds of the Negro Advancement, later Black Power movement in America; and cultural icons like Jamaican author Claude Mckay were instrumental in the Black cultural movement revolution taking place in New York and other cities. Today, through music and other cultural forms, the Caribbean generally strongly influences aspects of American culture.
There are many other historical instances of the close relations between the Black Caribbean and Black America and the influence on the other. Moreover, the impact of the Caribbean on the general history of America continues. Today, Caribbean Americans form the most extensive foreign black population in the US. It’s commendable this population was prosperous in gaining national recognition with Caribbean-American Heritage Month commemorated in June annually.
Organize celebration of Caribbean history.
But, notwithstanding, Black History Month, at least as it is commemorated in America, does not sufficiently highlight the rich, eclectic history of the Caribbean and its people. Since it is unrealistic to expect the Americanization of Black History Month to change, it is incumbent on the Caribbean community to collaborate on finding a unique format to commemorate this unique history periodically.
