Berkshire County — This year marks the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, which was founded in 1926.
According to the federal government’s official website on Black History Month, the observance was created by Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-trained historian and founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.
Black History Month was originally conceived as “Negro History Week,” with February chosen because it was the birthday month of both President Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
In 1970, Black educators and students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, expanded the week to a month, with other organizations and educational institutions following suit.
Years later, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976. In a statement recognizing the month-long observance, President Ford said:
Freedom and the recognition of individual rights are what our Revolution was all about. They were ideals that inspired our fight for Independence: ideals that we have been striving to live up to ever since. Yet it took many years before ideals became a reality for black citizens. The last quarter-century has finally witnessed significant strides in the full integration of Black people into every area of national life. In celebrating Black History Month, we can take satisfaction from this recent progress in the realization of the ideals envisioned by our Founding Fathers. But, even more than this, we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.
One hundred years after the conception of Black History Month, the pursuit of history continues on through the 10 Million Names Project, undertaken by the American Ancestors organization.
NAACP Berkshires discussed the project during its meeting held virtually on Wednesday, February 4. “This centennial of Black History Month is not only a time to honor the most famous names, but it is also a time to recover the lives that were never fully recorded, the families separated on paper, and the everyday people whose stories built Black America,” NAACP Berkshires Executive Committee member Frances Jones Sneed said at the beginning of the meeting.
According to its website, the goal of the genealogical project is to recover the names and histories of the estimated 10 million people of African descent who were enslaved between the 1500s and 1865 on land that became the United States. “We want to recover the names from slavery’s archive and reconnect them to the living descendants,” Sneed explained.
At the meeting, Kendra Field, who is an associate professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University and is chief historian of the 10 Million Names Project, discussed the goals and processes behind the project. “It’s a network of genealogists, historians, libraries, archives, cultural organizations with museums, and descendant communities aiming to establish a document-based research repository,” she explained. “The most important part for me, personally, is that we aim to amplify the voices of people who have been telling these stories for a long time. There has been a long and deep Black genealogical tradition that goes back to the 1500s, where many individuals, communities, and institutions have been documenting names and stories behind closed doors or openly for centuries now.”
Field said the 10 Million Names Project does not aim to create something new but instead to “shine a light” on existing work. “The project will be kind of a clearing house for historical research,” she said. “If you go through this type of genealogical research, you could click on a document on a website that may have your own ancestor’s name, but that document may live on another website. One idea for this project is to lead you to those organizations that have been doing the research work, where you might not otherwise know where to go to find your research.”
At the meeting, Lisa Shepperson, who is the first publicly identified living descendant of Elizabeth Freeman, spoke about the importance of the project. Freeman was born in Claverack-Red Mills, N.Y., around 1744 and died in Stockbridge in 1829. As a slave, she sued for her freedom and won it in 1781—more than 80 years before the Emancipation Proclamation became law in January 1863. The attorney who helped her win her freedom was Theodore Sedgwick, and she eventually worked as a housekeeper and nanny for the Sedgwick family in Stockbridge.
Shepperson is a certified nursing assistant in Richmond, Va., and her lineage to Freeman was uncovered through the 10 Million Names Project. “I am still learning a lot, and I am in awe of it,” Shepperson said. “I have tried to educate myself more on [Freeman’s] life, what she did, and how she did it. I have been trying to educate my children, my grandchildren, and anybody who comes in contact with me about her history. It has been very impactful on my life.”
For more information about the 10 Million Names Project, visit its website.
For more information about the NAACP Berkshires, visit its website.
