History Didn’t Start With a Month

This year, we’re celebrating 100 years of acknowledging Black history, and every time I hear that, I chuckle a little. Not because it’s funny-funny, but because it’s ironic-funny. Like when someone congratulates you for finally noticing something that’s been standing in the middle of the room the whole time. With the lights on. And music playing.

Black history didn’t start when it got a month*. It didn’t need permission, a proclamation, or a glossy bulletin board in a school hallway. It’s been history all the time—bold, brilliant, complicated, world-shifting history—whether it was acknowledged or not.

I still remember my grade school American History book. Big. Heavy. Smelled like glue and disappointment. We covered wars, presidents, treaties, and turning points with enthusiasm. Then we got to Black history and—BAM—less than a chapter. Not even a full chapter. More like a sampler platter. A greatest-hits remix that included the usual names: Crispus Attucks, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. Close the book. Test on Friday.

Those names matter. Giants. Legends. Sacred ground. But what about everybody else? The seen and unseen. The ones who pushed progress forward without footnotes. The teachers, organizers, artists, builders, healers, thinkers, parents, aunties, uncles, neighbors. The Black folks who didn’t make the textbook but made everything else move. They deserve their shine too.

Because Black history isn’t just about moments of resistance, it’s about creation. It’s innovation. It’s culture. It’s rhythm and language and style and joy and grit and survival and genius. It’s how music travels, how food tastes, how movements rise, how ideas spread. The ripple effects are everywhere. The impact is undeniable. Blackness has shaped global culture, shifted power, influenced how the world dresses, dances, talks, votes, loves, and dreams. You can trace it in art galleries and protest lines, in boardrooms and classrooms, in kitchens and on street corners.

So when I hear folks say, “Do they really need a month?” I smile again. Because here’s the truth: our contributions are too great, too powerful, too expansive to be contained in a year, a month, a week, or a day. And that’s exactly why those acknowledgments matter. Not as limits, but as reminders. As invitations. As entry points for people who are still catching up.

Black history doesn’t shrink when you try to confine it. It spills over. It refuses to be boxed in. It keeps showing up (whether it’s welcomed or not) reshaping the world in real time.

So yes, let’s mark the 100 years. Celebrate it. Reflect on it. But let’s also be clear: Black history wasn’t granted space, it claimed it. And it will keep doing so, long after the calendar page turns. Love it or not, it’s history. It’s always been history. And it’s still being written.

And while we’re talking about history being made in real time, let me say this plainly: the BRIC Fund is part of that story too. Not as a footnote. Not as a sidebar. But as living, breathing proof that Black-led, community-rooted investment changes outcomes, strengthens leaders, and builds futures that don’t have to ask for permission.

We are building infrastructure. We are resourcing vision. We are standing in the lineage of those sun and unsung progress-pushers who understood that history isn’t something you wait for, it’s something you do.

So if you’re already with us, stay with us. Double down. If you’ve been watching from the sidelines, now’s a good time to step in. Join us as we continue to make history…together.

*Black History Month originated with historian Carter G. Woodson, who launched a "Negro History Week" in 1926 to celebrate Black achievements overlooked by mainstream history, choosing February to coincide with abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln's birthdays, with the observance becoming a month-long national event officially recognized by Congress in 1976.