Every February, for Black History Month, we have the same names appear on classroom bulletin boards, social media graphics and corporate diversity newsletters. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is echoing across assembly halls. Rosa Parks was seated quietly in her section of the bus. These are towering figures, genuine giants of the civil rights movement whose courage changed the course of American history. No one is disputing that.
But there’s a question that more people should be asking: Out of the decades of the rich, world-altering and complex history of Black America, why do we keep returning to the same two or three names when there are other names that should be known and spoken of? And what does it say that we have had decades of Black History Month celebrations but most people still cannot name more than a handful of figures?
For we know there is a reason that King and Parks dominate the mainstream conversation, and it is worth being honest about it. King was a dreamer, a man who spoke of love and unity in language that made even his opponents feel included and Parks was a quiet seamstress who was simply tired one day. Their stories, as they are usually told, are palpable and digestible. They can all fit on a single Instagram post or taught in thirty minutes as they do not make non-black readers or listeners too uncomfortable. Most of what’s left out of their story is equally telling. King was investigated by the FBI under director J. Edgar Hoover for years; he was considered dangerous and radical by much of white America while he was alive. He was accused of being anti-American and a Communist. Rosa Parks was not simply tired; she was a trained activist, a secretary for the NAACP and her act was part of a deliberate, organized strategy. Even the figures we celebrate, we tend to celebrate incompletely. This comfortable version of Black history asks very little of us, the audience; all it says is that things were bad and only a few people were brave enough to speak up and now everything is better. It wraps the struggle of Black America into a resolution with a pink little bow. Real Black history is far more radical, demanding and messier than what we are told. That is a much harder conversation and it has more names than the ones usually talked about. Some of Black American history includes these unspoken names.
Howard Thurman was actually the mentor to King and was a theologian, educator, author and civil rights activist. Thurman was a firm believer in the nonviolent approach to civil rights, which is why King looked up to him. He also cofounded the first major interracial and interdenominational church and later became dean of both Howard and Boston University.
Building on this tradition of faith-informed activism, James Cone was a scholar and theologian. He founded the discipline of Black liberation theology; he is arguably one of the most significant intellectual contributions to American religious thought in the 20th century. Born in Fordyce, Arkansas, Cone grew up under the crushing weight of American apartheid and channeled that experience into a body of work that fundamentally reframed how the world understood Christianity, race and justice. His book, “Black Theology and Black Power,” made an audacious, argued case that the gospel of Jesus Christ was inherently a message of liberation for the oppressed and in the American context, that meant Black people. His name is almost never spoken during Black History Month.
The fight for justice also took shape through the tireless activism of Mary Church Terrell. Terrell was an educator, activist and co-founder of the NAACP, who was still picketing segregated Washington, D.C. restaurants at the age of 89 which demonstrated a lifelong dedication to equality and social change.
Similarly, the courage of young activists played a crucial role in the movement. Claudette Colvin was a fifteen-year-old girl who had refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus a few months before Rosa Parks. Her story was never told, partly because she was a pregnant teenager and civil rights leaders made a strategic decision not to center her as the face of the movement.
There are more names that should be taught in schools. These figures are a part of Black America’s history and they have been systematically filtered out of the mainstream conversation.
You probably want to know why this is important. Knowing these figures is about understanding and being aware of why it is relevant today. Beyond the individual lessons each figure teaches, there is a cumulative effect to knowing this wider cast of names. A society that only knows the edited version of its history is a society operating with a dangerously incomplete map. Understanding Black resistance and contribution does not divide people; it gives us an honest and rich foundation on which to build better.
For a young Black student in the classroom, this story can feel small and limited, starting with slavery and ending with a dream. Black history goes far back to the Mali, Ghana and Kush empires that were thriving, building and governing long before Europe rose to global power. Black history isn’t just a story about suffering; it is a story of greatness. If teachers are only teaching King and Parks, they are just showing a fraction of Black history and it creates an unconscious framework in which blackness is always defined in relation to struggle. It leaves out Black joy, innovation, intellect and leadership that existed before enslaved people were brought to the shores of America.
This isn’t an argument against celebrating King and Parks; their contribution to Black America are real and they deserve their parts in history. The argument here is that there should be more names, more truths and more stories added to what is being taught in schools. That means school curricula that go beyond the March on Washington. It means media coverage that does not recycle the same five names every February. It means publishing houses, educators and institutions making a genuine effort to surface the stories that have been buried. Black History Month is extensive enough to hold the full complexity of our diversity and contributions to what black people have done and endured in this world. Young African Americans deserve to see themselves more in stories that are more than survival, but in stories of creation, power and discovery.
Black history belongs to us all. It is a story that shows how rich a group of people can be. The more we engage completely and honestly, the more we become equipped to understand the world we live in and build something better together. We need to know that black history didn’t just start with a dream. And it isn’t just a dream. It is a vast, ongoing, world-shaping story. It is time we started telling it that way and started telling the stories of other Black historical figures.
