What is Black History Month's role today? (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Julian Hayter, an assistant professor in University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies, comments. Hayter is a historian whose research focuses on African American politics in Richmond, Virginia, within the broader context of modern African American history, American political development after 1945, the American civil rights movement, and African American history since the Civil War.
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A series of soul-searching community conversations preceded the commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. And even the Museum of the Confederacy is attempting to refocus its mission to tell a more inclusive story.
Could it be, then, that the life’s work of Carter G. Woodson — the Virginia native known as the father of black history — has been realized 88 years after he pioneered what was then called Negro History Week?
It’s a question Julian Maxwell Hayter, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond, plans to pose to students at a Black History Month event on campus Sunday, but one he said he cannot himself answer.
“Are we using Black History Month as a point of reflection,” Hayter said, “or has it become a point of contention?