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Black History Month 2025 Message

2025 Black History Month/44 Days

Saint Mary’s College of California

Theme- “African Americans and Labor”

 

On behalf of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ODEI) and the Black Liberation Council (BLC) I invite everyone to join in the many activities on and off-campus to celebrate Black History Month and our 44 Days of events, in honor of the first Black President of the United States, the 44th – President Barack Obama. Attached is a listing of some events, but also keep track of ones as they are added to the ODEI calendar on our website and mentioned in our upcoming newsletter. And follow our SMCDEI Instagram as we highlight our Black colleagues across campus. 

In 1915 Dr. Carter G. Woodson worked with others to establish the Association for the Study of African American History (ASALH) after participating in a national celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation sponsored by the state of Illinois. Dr. Woodson was an alumnus of the University of Chicago. He founded Negro History Week in 1926 to be held the second week of February in honor of the birthdays of President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. 50 years later, in 1976 ASALH changed the week to Black History Month. Dr. Woodson and the members of ASALH understood it was incumbent upon them to recognize and celebrate the numerous contributions of Black people. Black History Month is a counter presentation and resistance to the ongoing negative stereotypes, disregard of Black excellence, hard work, creativity and intellect and the anti-Blackness that permeated American society then, and still continues today. 

This year ASALH chose the theme of “African Americans and Labor” because it marks the 100th Anniversary of the creation of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids by labor organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph. This was the first Black union to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). On June 5, 1941, A. Philip Randolph, International President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, wrote the following to Fiorella La Guardia, Mayor of New York City:

Because the Negro People have not received their just share of jobs in national defense, and our young men have not been integrated into the armed forces of the Nation including the Army, Navy, Air Corps and Marine, on a basis of equality, some of the Negro leaders have formulated plans and set up the necessary machinery in the various sections of the country for the purpose of mobilizing from ten to fifty thousand Negroes to march on Washington in the interest of securing jobs and justice n national defense and fair participation and equal integration into the Nation’s military and naval forces.”

His words served as a precursor to the organizing of the famous 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have A Dream Speech.” King stated, 

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.

Read the Speech.

https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety

 

In Solidarity,

Dr. Terri Jett, Associate Vice President and Senior Diversity Officer

 

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Black History Month 2025 Poster