black history month
BY DR. JULIANNE MALVEAUX
F ebruary is the shortest and coldest month in
the calendar year, and it is also Black History
Month. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, author of
The Miseducation of the Negro, founded Negro History
Week in the second week of February because the abolitionist Frederick Douglass claimed that week for his
birthday (slave birth dates were rarely recorded). The
week became a month, and the rest is history.
February has become the pivotal month for signaling “diverse awareness” by celebrating the contributions of African-American people in the United States
and in the world. Colleges and universities, civic
associations, corporations and others plan Black
History Month celebrations as ways to embrace the
ways that African-American people’s lives and heritage
are woven into the fabric of American life.
I encourage people to view Black History Month
as an exciting learning experience, an opportunity to
explore little-known aspects of African-American life,
and to explore the ways that African-American history
has impacted their personal history. As an economist,
I am especially interested in the contribution that
African-American people have made to our economic
system and the engagement that African-American
people have had in an economy that has not always
treated us fairly.
African-American Entrepreneurship
The fact that enslaved people actually had the faith
and perseverance to purchase themselves speaks to
their sense that the flawed economic system might
well work for them. The economic historian Juliet
