“The Footsteps of Our Ancestors … the Legacy Continues” is the theme for this year’s Black History Month Celebration at Kent State University.
“Because we are the birthplace of Black History Month, it is so important to acknowledge it and celebrate it, not just during the month of February, but all year round,” said Ilianna Velez, assistant director of Kent State’s E. Timothy Moore Student Multicultural Center, which is overseeing the planning of campus Black History Month events.
Velez said the theme was selected “to highlight and acknowledge that our ancestors paved the way for us, but also to recognize those on campus who continue to do the work and continue to be trailblazers in their fields.”
Black History Month traces its roots to 1926, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson, founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life, established Negro History Week, celebrated during the second week of February.
By 1969, the Black United Students (BUS) organization at Kent State, with support from campus educators, began to advocate that the entire month of February be commemorated as Black History Month. After a year of planning, the first observance of Black History Month as a month-long celebration took place at Kent State in 1970.
It would be another six years before February received a formal national designation as Black History Month, when President Gerald Ford, in 1976, made the designation to coincide with our nation’s bicentennial celebration, urging Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
BUS continues to take a leadership role in planning events for the month.
De'Anna Baccus, president of BUS, said she hoped that all students were looking forward to the events being planned.
“Black History Month is so important to BUS and Kent State because we made the month, we created the idea for it to be a month,” she said.
Baccus, 20, a junior computer science major from Dayton, Ohio, said the month is even more important now when there are so many attempts to suppress Black voices.
“We know our voices are trying to be silenced,” Baccus said. She noted the decision, earlier in January, when the Florida Department of Education rejected an Advanced Placement course covering African American studies.
The AP program helps high school students earn college credit. The class is currently undergoing a pilot phase, with 60 schools across the U.S. participating in a trial run, including at least one high school in Florida. But Florida officials have taken issue with the possibility that the course would teach about Black Lives Matter and the reparations movement and they rejected the course from state curriculums.
“We know our history is being silenced and trying to be made to sound better to others,” Baccus said. “Our culture is being suppressed every day.”
This year, Kent State’s observance of Black History Month will include its celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The January federal holiday to honor the slain civil rights activist took place when the university was closed for winter break, so the commemoration of the day will take place at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2, when Bernice A. King, daughter of the civil rights leader, will be the keynote speaker.
King, who was just 5 years old when her father was assassinated, serves as chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which was founded by her mother, the late Coretta Scott King, as the official living memorial to the life, work and legacy of her father.
The event, which will take place in the Kent Student Center Ballroom, is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Use this link to download tickets.
MLK Day events will take place all week, beginning today and will help to usher in Black History Month. Visit the MLK Celebration calendar of events for a complete list of MLK Day events taking place this week.
Black History Month events will continue throughout February at various university departments and locations. For a complete list, visit the Black History Month events calendar.
One notable event is the University Libraries’ exhibit of a selection of photographs from the expansive Lafayette Tolliver Collection: “Lafayette Tolliver: Visual Footprints in Time.”
In conjunction with the ongoing exhibit of his work, Tolliver will be the featured guest at an event at 5 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 23 in University Library’s Harrick Garden Room on the Kent Campus. Attendance is free and open to the public; however, registration is encouraged. The exhibit will be displayed in the Marovitz Gallery, on the first floor of the University Library.
As a Kent State photojournalism student and Black movement activist, Tolliver, ’71, served as a photographer and columnist for the Chestnut Burr and Daily Kent Stater publications, in addition to contributing to Black Watch. He documented students of color through his photography while enrolled at Kent State from 1967-71. As a member of BUS, he often was involved in programming, giving him a unique vantage point for capturing candid photos of activities and gatherings that engaged students of color. The resulting collection boasts more than 1,000 photographs, many of which were never published or made accessible to the public.
In 2014, Tolliver donated his photographs to Kent State’s Special Collections and Archives. The Tolliver photographs have been fully digitized and are available online.
“We are honored to host Lafayette Tolliver and celebrate his photographs. His collection represents another step forward in documenting the student experience at Kent State, especially of those who are historically underserved and overlooked," said Ken Burhanna, dean of University Libraries.
The “Lafayette Tolliver: Visual Footprints in Time” exhibit will be on display from early February through the summer. Visitors can view the exhibit during the University Library’s normal hours.