{"id":41006,"date":"2020-01-31T11:17:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T10:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/black-history-month-julie-and-the-choice-of-freedom-by-rhiannon-giddens\/"},"modified":"2021-02-09T16:07:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T15:07:07","slug":"black-history-month-julie-and-the-choice-of-freedom-by-rhiannon-giddens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/black-history-month-julie-and-the-choice-of-freedom-by-rhiannon-giddens\/","title":{"rendered":"Black History Month: ‘Julie’ and the choice of freedom, by Rhiannon Giddens"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Each year on the 1st of February, Black History Month begins in the United States. A month dedicated to African-American history and the African diaspora. This February, PAM revisits a few moments of its history with emblematic songs. <\/b><\/span><\/h4>\n

It is rarely mentioned: last year\u2019s screenings of <\/span>Black Panther<\/span><\/i>, the first North-American blockbuster featuring Black superheroes, was free to watch in 250 cinemas across the United States, as a starting event for the 2019 edition of the Black History Month, a time dedicated to the study and the value of Black history in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whilst the initiative has already been exported to the United Kingdom and Canada, it is not everybody\u2019s cup of tea in the United States. Some criticize the event for becoming a commercial lever for brands that capitalize on the event, while others refuse to reduce it to a single month because <\/span>“the history of Blacks is the whole of American History”<\/span><\/i>, as actor Morgan Freeman puts it. The writer James Baldwin even proposed a <\/span>“White History Week”<\/span><\/i> because for him <\/span>“the truth of this country is buried in the myths that Whites have about themselves”<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the United States, Black History Month remains an institution. It was established in 1976 to celebrate the country\u2019s bicentennial and to ignite deeper discussions on the role that Black people have played in the history of the United States. Black History Month originated from <\/span>Negro History Week<\/span><\/i>, a special week conceived by Carter Godwin Woodson in 1926. The aim of the young graduate from Howard University in Washington was to make African-American history known and recognized, at the time excluded from the nation\u2019s historic narrative.<\/span><\/p>\n

Woodson had chosen symbolically to celebrate Black culture on the second week of February due to it coinciding with Abraham Lincoln\u2019s birthday (the president who formally abolished slavery in 1865). February was also the month former slave, writer and hero Frederick Douglass was born. Indeed, slaves did not know their real date of birth<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nOne song for one chapter in the \u201cBlack USstory\u201d Month
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