Black History Month

This February marks 100 years of Black History celebrations! What we now know as Black History Month was started by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the second Black American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard and one of the founders of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). In 1926, he established Negro History Week as an annual prompt for education and commemoration. It was set for the second week of February to build upon celebrations of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays. Over the years, it grew into a nationwide, month-long event, and in 1986, Congress officially recognized February as National Black History Month. For more information, visit the ASALH website at asalh.org.

Come browse our book display! In keeping with the centennial theme, we’ve selected books about preserving and interacting with Black history.

In “The Black Box: Writing the Race” (305.896 Gates), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discusses the many Black writers who assigned their own meaning to the category intended to confine them. Irvin Weathersby, Jr. surveys landmarks marked by forgotten violence in his book, “In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space” (306.47 Weathersby). “Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore” by Char Adams (323.1196 Adams) is a celebration of Black bookstores as meeting spaces and cultural centers for the sharing of ideas. While the diary of poet Lauren Russell’s great-great-grandfather, a Confederate slave-owner, was preserved, his slave, her great-great-grandmother, was forgotten. Russell fills in the blanks in her family history in “Descent” (811.6 Rus).

On the fiction side of things, a fact-checker for the government must investigate the stories told about a lynching in Danielle Evans’ “The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories” (FIC Evans). “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi (FIC Gya) traces the descendants of two Ghanaian sisters — one an Englishman’s wife, the other sold into slavery. Charmaine Wilkerson’s characters reckon with the history they’ve inherited, told through the lens of a broken heirloom in “Good Dirt” and through a recipe in “Black Cake” (FIC Wilkerson).

Check out what’s happening on our website or call us at 765-362-2242. The library is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and 1-5 p.m. Sunday.