‘Unveiled’: AJC Black History Month series turns 10

Black colleges had sprung up all across the South, ushering in the New Negro, a generation of Black thinkers, artists and leaders who were changing how they were being viewed in the country.

Credit: NY Public Library Public Colletions

Credit: NY Public Library Public Colletions

A country that still had former slaves as a living reminder of an institution that was banned just 60 year prior.

In February 1926 Woodson, who had founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, announced the creation of “Negro History Week,” which would be celebrated the second week of the month to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass (The Lion of Anacostia) and Abraham Lincoln (The Great Emancipator).

The week eventually became Black History Month.

The vision of Woodson, the son of former slaves who went on to earn his Ph.D at Harvard University, has now become an important part of Americana, celebrating our achievements, while painfully retelling how we got here.

Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is marking the 10th anniversary of our acclaimed Black History Month series with “Atlanta Unveiled: How African Americans Shaped Our City.”

As we have done the past nine years, this daily series will also include stories that expand outside of the confines of Atlanta to nationally explore aspects of Black life and culture.

Throughout the month, you will read a variety of stories about how Black architects, Black insurance companies, Black mayors and even the Dungeon Family built Atlanta.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

You will read how the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters redefined the Black middle class, how Gil Scott-Heron redefined poetry and how Tucker Aye Alxndr is redefining himself.

But since we are talking about history, I wanted to step back to 2016, when my hair was blacker and shorter.

Credit: U.S. National Archives

Credit: U.S. National Archives

I was covering Black culture for the paper and a year prior, created AJC Sepia.

At first it was a Facebook page that curated AJC articles that would be of interest to Black audiences. AJC Sepia — the precursor to Unapologetically ATL and UATL — was a smash and eventually found its way into the paper itself, while establishing a strong online presence.

In January 2016, I was dragged into a meeting and asked what I had planned for Black History Month. It would be easy to say the idea of running a story every day of the month was mine, but I would be lying.

That idea actually came from Sandra Brown, the paper’s senior editor of visuals. She said Atlanta is such an important city in the essence of Black culture, that it would be easy to have a story every day.

Sandra was right, but like most great editors, she didn’t volunteer to write any of those stories.

She did give me full use of the paper’s photographers and video team, but I wrote almost every story that year under the heading: “29 reasons to celebrate Black History Month.”

The inaugural story was about Woodson.

I wrote half the stories in 2017. But that is when things changed.

Subsequently, I started to write fewer articles as my co-workers started noticing.

In the 10 years that we have been doing this, nearly everyone who has been at the paper during this period, has touched this series in some way through writing, photography, video, editing, graphics or research. One of the things I set out to do when we started was to highlight lesser known, but equally significant, aspects of Black history.

So, we never had a real story about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., or even Rosa Parks (until I convinced her biographer to pen an essay for us).

Instead, we had stories about Double Consciousness, The Talented Tenth, the Doll Test and Tragic Mulattos.

We carved Georgia’s Mount Rushmore of Music, took a forbidden drink of water with Cecil Williams and watched how a kiss in 1898 changed cinema.

Credit: Ric Watkins / AJC

Credit: Ric Watkins / AJC

We explored Black trauma, Black health, Black love, Black queerness and Black resistance.

We stepped with the Zetas, sang “Movin’ On Up,” and read a letter to “My Old Master,” through masterful videos.

We produced more than 300 pieces of original content through articles, photography, videos, playlists, mini-documentaries, maps and charts.

Like Woodson, who would go on to write his classic “The Mis-Education of the Negro” before he died in 1950, we are going to keep pushing.

You can follow this year’s series, as well as access our full Black History Month library here. And what we are doing now is perhaps more important than it has ever been.

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

In the flurry of President Donald Trump’s relentless issuance of executive orders, rumors floated last week that he was canceling Black History Month.

I am not sure that he can do that, but on Wednesday, as federal agencies scramble to satisfy Trump’s disdain for diversity programs, the Pentagon’s intelligence agency said that it was pausing observances of Black History Month, Martin Luther King’s Birthday and Juneteenth, among other annual cultural events.

“If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race,” Woodson once said.

Amen.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

This year’s AJC Black History Month series, marking its 10th year, focuses on the role African Americans played in building Atlanta and the overwhelming influence that has had on American culture. These daily offerings appear throughout February in the paper and on ajc.com and ajc.com/news/atlanta-black-history.

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