How It Began: YouTube personality GloZell Green breaks down the real history of black history month
Article By Tonya Matthews // EEW Magazine // Black History
GloZell Green, a YouTube personality who rose to fame making the masses laugh with her outlandish stunts and absurd brand of humor, has turned her attention toward more serious matters.
In honor of Black History Month 2020, the 47-year-old, real name GloZell Lyneette Simon, is breaking down the real history of Black History Month.
Tapped by ATTN, a media company that turns social topics into digestible, entertaining videos, GloZell, best known for her infamous cinnamon challenge, is featured in an approximately 4-minute clip, first posted on YouTube Feb. 21.
“Black History Month is the shortest month of the year. But have you ever wondered why?” she asks in the video. “It might not be the reason you think. But to understand why February, we need to understand why Black History needed a month in the first place.”
Adding a bit of humor and sass to the presentation of historical fact, she then goes on to explain its origin.
BLACK HISTORY MONTH’S ORIGIN
It was Carter G. Woodson, a founder of the Association for the Study of African American History, who first came up with the idea of the celebration that became Black History Month. Woodson, the son of recently freed Virginia slaves, who went on to earn a Ph.D in history from Harvard, originally came up with the idea of Negro History Week to encourage black Americans to become more interested in their own history and heritage. Woodson worried that black children were not being taught about their ancestors’ achievements in American schools in the early 1900s.
“If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated,” Woodson said.
WHY FEBRUARY?
Woodson chose February for Negro History Week because it had the birthdays of President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Lincoln was born on Feb. 12, and Douglass, a former slave who did not know his exact birthday, celebrated his on Feb. 14.
GloZell noted that Black History Month is more than just “a way to honor the great contributions of the black community—and there’s a lot—but it’s also a roadmap to learn from the past… and to inspire the next generation.”
Ending with a fitting quote from Dr. Maya Angelou, she said, “You can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.”
Watch below:
