Our Founder and Culture Keeper

From The G.C. and France Hawley's founder, a short article for Black History Month 2019.

Black History Month to many African Americans is a time to remember and honor the lives of our enslaved ancestors who lived and died in bondage, to celebrate our freedom from chattel slavery, to uplift our advancements in spite of America's White supremacist foundations, and to encourage our youth to continue to strive to be the best they can be.

It is also a time in which we invite all people regardless of skin color to join us, celebrate and learn how America would not be the country that it is without the free labor work, the inventions, the ways of resistance to slavery, and the creativity that enslaved and freed African Americans put into building this country.

Black History Week which was transformed into Black History Month was created because, in the midst of our freedom we were still subjected to the evils of oppression, hatred and the voices of colonized versions of who we are and what we've done.
Our presence was not integrated into the American history books and the whole truth of our contributions to the making of America was not taught to school children. Most Black children were not integrated into the public school systems when Black History Week was created. In the years since Reconstruction and the first wave of the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans look forward to celebrating our history, heritage and culture all year long as well as during Black History Month.

I would like to speak about the American Black women who were "chosen" and stepped forward to be the necessary change agents of their times. Many times the men are highlighted and honored and the women are left behind.

Often neglected and ignored these little known and unknown Black women who would work through sickness because they had no money to see a doctor even if there was one available to Black people, who worked through many lacks caused by segregation and oppressive social structures, these Black mothers who held together their families, maintaining their spiritual lives all while doing what ever kind of work that was necessary to provide money for their homes; where the foundation of the Black American success stories.

The Black women who nurtured and raised White children, cleaned White people's houses and cooked their meals. The Black women who worked the farms, taught/educated the Black children and sold baked goods to help the elderly Black people who could no longer work. The Black women who were midwives in their small communities "catching" hundreds of babies of all colors in their lifetime.

Black women fought in the Union army to bring down the Confederate army. Black women built businesses that helped to foster Black communities during the Reconstruction era, before White supremacists got mad that Free and emancipated Black people were flourishing and massacred Black people in these communities - communities found in several cities and states across America.

I am lifting up the Black women who spoke for themselves in the Women's Rights Movement because, White women did not plan to include Black women in their fight for equality and equity. Black women worked side by side with Black men during the first wave of the Civil Rights Movement, helping to push forward America's promise to "cash a check" that the American government wrote to Black people.

These known and unknown Black women raised their children in love, truth and power so that many of them would became some of the Black Women Leaders of their time. Although their names are lost or buried in forgotten narratives these Black women helped raise and send forth future generations of accomplished Black women such as: Anna Julia Cooper, Pauli Murray, Lois Mailou Jones, Selma Burke, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Lucy Craft Laney, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Willa B. Player, to name a few.

I am adding a link to the ASALH web site so that you can read how Carter G. Woodson created and developed Black History Week, which was transformed into Black History Month. For us, Black History Is American History and we celebrate it 365 days a year.


Lynda D. Edwards
Arts Education & Culture Consultant-Lecturer-Community Leader-Advocate for marginalized people.
Founder & CEO of The G.C. and Frances Hawley Museum® - I Remember Our History®.
A subsidiary of BEHIND THE SCENES (In Action)
©2019 All rights Reserved

Photograph By Charles Harris, for an article in OUR STATE Magazine December 2018 issue/Upcoming Toy Exhibit at The NC Museum of History.

LINK To The ASALH web site
https://asalh.org/about-us/origins-of-black-history-month/