Black History Month And Black History Always
Image description: Black background. A red and yellow decorative band crosses the square image, with a yellow circle over it. A white circle in the middle includes black text: Black History Month and Black History Always.
By Tigress Osborn
Black History Month is celebrated in the United States throughout the month of February. What started as Negro History Week in1926 grew into Black History Month in the 60’s as Black Pride and Civil Rights movements increased interest in the history of Black people in the U.S. and across the African diaspora. Black History Month was eventually adopted in 1976 as an official U.S. celebration.
The first time I remember knowing about Black History Month, I was a first grader in a small town, Arizona public school in 1980. There was one other Black student in my class. We were the only Black students in our grade and two of only a handful of Black kids in the entire school. I remember taking Ebony magazines to school, but I don’t remember what we did with them. The next clear memory I have of honoring Black History Month was in high school. Ebony magazine was a star player once again, as I cut up issue after issue to make collage posters of important Black people to hang all over my school. Some of them were famous athletes and movie stars my classmates would recognize; some were inventors and scholars and people none of us would ever have been exposed to in mainstream media. Those “unknown” heroes were known to some Black folx. They were the reason magazines like Ebony existed–so we could see reflections of ourselves when other media either couldn’t be bothered or explicitly made an effort to keep things mighty white.
Later, I would become devoted to Essence and its portrayals of beautiful Black women and femmes. Even later, I would discover magazines like Belle Noire that featured plus-size sistas. But at the time of my first forays into planning Black History Month visibility campaigns to educate my adolescent peers, my favorite magazines were the ones aimed at teenage girls, Seventeen and especially Sassy. They occasionally featured Black girls and other people of color, and Sassy even named a Black girl the “Sassiest Girl in America.” But for the most part, they were assumed to be race neutral, which in the world of early 90’s publications (and most media to this day) actually means white-centered.
Sassy had a monthly column called “Stuff I Wrote” and it included lots of one-liners, jokes, and quippy thoughts, the kind of things we’d see as tweets today. I remember the day my heart sank when, amongst the witty wonderings in the one magazine I thought was closest to understanding my coming-of-age heart, I saw something along these lines: “Why do they get to have Ebony magazine? Wouldn’t it be racist if we had Ivory magazine?” At the time, I didn’t know how to articulate my disappointment. Now I do– for the most part, I was reading Ivory magazine every month on their pages. How dare they blame Black people for having the audacity to carve out a space for our stories when all they did most of the time was maintain a space for theirs?
Now, I’m a middle-aged Black mixed-race woman. I have a degree in Black studies; I spent years working with Black and POC youth; for a decade, I ran a Black-centered plus-size nightclub event. I’ve been a fat activist for about 14 years. In all those spaces, the number of times I’ve seen and heard resentment about Black-centered anything from White people who exist at almost all times in white-centered everything is outrageous. Throughout my life I’ve heard the same argument about Black History Month that some random teen writer penned for “Stuff You Wrote.” It goes like this: “If they get to have Black History Month, why don’t we get to have White History Month?”
We do get to have White History Month. All of us get to have it, and we have it 12 months a year. In fact, we don’t just “get” to have it. We have to have it, and for most of us, for most of our lives, we’ve had to have it in whatever ways were most comfortable for white people. As you read this, white people all over this country are trying to pass legislation ensuring that white children will be protected from learning history in any way that might make white children uncomfortable. What do they imagine the comfort level for children of color has been all these years? They don’t imagine it. It’s irrelevant.
As an adult, I take Black History Month seriously. I take Black History seriously all year–as we all should. But, just as there are many things we do all the time but do with extra zeal in certain times of concentration, you’ll find me during February searching out stories I don’t know yet, going deeper into stories I do know. It is not always comfortable. But that’s what we have to do if we’re going to actually learn from history. I want to celebrate Black resilience and Black brilliance in every possible way, and sometimes that includes looking at the uncomfortable aspects of history, including the uncomfortable realities of why we don’t see Black people in certain spaces.
Why weren’t there more Black people in my teen magazines? Because there weren’t more Black people working on my teen magazines.
Why? Because there weren’t Black people in the spaces they were being produced.
Why? Because Black people didn’t have the same opportunities to be in those spaces.
Why? Why why why?
I take this same approach when trying to piece together the true history of the role of Black people in the documented, organized size acceptance/fat acceptance/fat rights/fat liberation movement(s). Why weren’t there more Black people in NAAFA when I got here? Why weren’t there more Black people in NAAFA 20 years ago? 35 years ago? 50 years ago? What about other fat lib spaces? Where were the Black folx? (Where were a lot of folx, but it’s BHM so that’s who we’re focusing on today).
Some key moments we identify as the roots of fat lib are really, really white moments, and throughout the history of the documented, organized fat activist movement, what’s often not documented, especially before the modern era, are the Black people who were there. I’ve been going through old NAAFA newsletters from the 70’s. So far, I’ve seen one visibly Black person (unidentified) in the photos. I haven’t tracked them down yet and I don’t know if I ever will be able to. Maybe this person was having the time of their lives at NAAFA events. Hey, sometimes I’ve had great times despite being the only Black person in a place. Other times, I’ve been incredibly uncomfortable, but made the best of it. Other times, I’ve just been uncomfortable. I’ve felt all those things as a Black person in NAAFA in the 2010’s and 20’s, so I can imagine what I would’ve felt in NAAFA in other decades.
We see fat Black leadership in other social justice movements at the time of NAAFA’s founding. What does whiteness have to do with why we don’t see Black leadership, or even much Black participation, in early NAAFA? What does anti-Blackness have to do with it? Is there simply more urgency of other issues for Black folx (then? now?), or is there discomfort in these spaces for Black people (then? now?), or are Black people simply not interested in NAAFA (then? now?). The questions feel rhetorical, but they’re not.
If you’re wondering how we got from my first grade memory of Black History Month to the difficult questions NAAFA and other fat lib spaces have to answer about lack of intersectionality
in the history of fat community, here’s how: even though I don’t remember the specifics of what we did with those Ebony magazines, I remember being asked to bring them to school because my teacher incorporated Black experience in what we were learning. In today’s vernacular, she said that Black Lives Matter. In the summer of 2020, NAAFA joined many other orgs and individuals in saying the same. Some of those folx moved on from the sentiment as soon as it stopped trending. We didn’t. We still have a lot of work to do to make NAAFA a truly intersectional endeavor, and we’re working hard at it.
Stay tuned to our social media (@naafaofficial) this month to see spotlights on Black activists and creators, as well as webinars this month and through the year featuring Black folks in fat lib whose work we support and who you should be supporting. Learn from the resources in our monthly Anti-Racism Resources feature in our newsletter and on our website. Read past and future Black-centered items on our blog. Wherever you find us, watch for opportunities to support Black folx in fat community. And don’t stop checking after February is over. We have to care about Black history every day. We have to care about Black futures every day.
Image description: Tigress Osborn is a middle-aged fat Black mixed-race woman with long, dark hair and freckles. She is wearing black framed glasses and a purple top.
Tigress Osborn is the NAAFA Board Chair. Tigress joined the NAAFA Board of Directors in 2015 and became Director of Community Outreach in 2017. She is the founder of Full Figure Entertainment in Oakland, CA and co-founder, with activist/blogger Nicholet Deschine Parkhurst of Redstreak Girl, of PHX Fat Force in Phoenix, AZ. Her professional background as a youth advocate, diversity educator, and equity and inclusion consultant informs the fat liberation activism she has engaged in since 2008.