Jonathan P. Baird

February is Black history month. This year is actually the 100th anniversary of the celebration of Black history. It was started in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson, the second African-American to earn a doctorate in history from Harvard University (after W.E. B. DuBois).

Woodson originally promoted African-American history because American schools had systemically erased Black contributions from history. Textbooks ignored Black achievements or taught lies about Black people . “Lost cause” mythology from Confederacy sympathizers sought to justify segregation and advocated the racist ideology that Black people were inferior and that slavery had been benevolent.

James Baldwin described this reality:

“When I was growing up, I was taught in American history books that Africa had no history and neither did I. That I was a savage about whom the less said the better, who had been saved by Europe and brought to America. And, of course, I believed it. I didn’t have much choice, those were the only books there were.”

The origin of Black history celebration coincides with a period in American history referred to as the nadir of U.S. history. It was the lowest point in American race relations. After the death of Reconstruction, white supremacy dominated American life from 1890 to 1940. Voter suppression, Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and the proliferation of Confederate statutes reinforced white dominance and rule.

Now in 2026, we face a second nadir. The powers-that-be are again attempting to erase Black history. Whether it is removing slavery exhibits from museums, ending DEI programs or disenfranchising voters, the white power structure has been turning the clock backwards in the service of white supremacy. The National Park Service just removed language from visitor brochures at the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson Mississippi that described the man who killed civil rights leader Medgar Evers as a racist.

The retrenchment could not be more apparent. Trump’s posting dehumanized videos of the Obamas as apes, calling Somalis “garbage” and talking about Haitians eating dogs and cats speaks volumes.

All the gains made from the civil rights movement in the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s are endangered. Rights gained are being lost. This was certainly true after Reconstruction and it is true now. As a society, we have been going backwards.

This coming term the U.S. Supreme Court stands poised to eviscerate the remaining parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts, on behalf of the conservative majority, invalidated Section 5 of the statute which required states with histories of racist voter suppression to “pre-clear” changes to the election laws with the Department of Justice. It looks like the Court may polish off Section 2 which has barred state and local governments from implementing policies that discriminate against minority voters.

Killing the Voting Rights Act would be a catastrophe. That has been a long-time goal of the conservative legal movement. It would represent a massive rollback of rights achieved at great cost by the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.

The Trump regime has further signaled their racist intentions by the use of Executive Orders targeting the Smithsonian for “Improper ideology” and reviving so-called “patriotic education” that excises and sanitizes Black history.

They also have sought to reverse the removal of Confederate monuments. Trump has described Confederate monuments as “beautiful” and he has argued that taking down the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee would be “foolish” and “a complete desecration”.

Lee is venerated as a general even though his military actions were traitorous to the United States. Less remembered is his role as an enslaver. Although he owned few slaves, he came to manage nearly 200 as the executor of his father-in-law’s estate. These individuals were supposed to be freed within five years of his father-in-law’s death. But Lee didn’t free them. He leased them out for profit maintaining a position as de facto slave owner.

One slave, Wesley Norris, along with two others, tried to escape to freedom in 1859. Lee hired a local law enforcement officer who caught up with the three before they crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania. Returned to Virginia, Lee ordered the three be tied to a post, stripped to the waist and whipped. Norris got 20 lashes, the others got 50. Lee ordered the estate’s overseer to wash the bleeding backs of the enslaved with salt water, to add to their agony. As further punishment, the three were separated from their families and sent to work away from their homes.

The New York Daily Tribune reported Norris’s account of these events. He later wrote about it in 1866 for the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor who wrote a 2007 biography of Lee confirmed Norris’s account. Lee merits no monument nor do other Confederates.

Frederick Douglass wrote:

“Monuments to the “lost cause” will prove monuments of folly, both with memories of a wicked rebellion which they must necessarily perpetuate, and in the failure to accomplish the particular purpose had in view by those who build them. It is a needless record of stupidity and wrong.”

Even though it is a seesaw struggle to achieve genuine multi-racial democracy and we face the second nadir, I think we can appreciate that we are living through the last hurrah of white supremacy, an entirely discredited ideology. This Black history month, we can feel good about that.