February 27th, 2025

Reflections on Black History: We don’t need Trump’s permission to celebrate us

Rev. Irene Monroe

For this Black History Month, the Banner reached out to members of our community and asked them to share their thoughts and feelings about our Black history and culture. We think you will find their responses as inspirational as we did. — Ronald Mitchell, Publisher and Editor, Bay State Banner

We don’t need Trump’s permission to celebrate us

by Rev. Irene Monroe

Frederick Douglas is dead. In 2017, President Donald J. Trump didn’t appear to know this fact. However, in 2025, he may still not know.

In kicking off Black History Month in 2017, Trump hosted a “listening session” at the White House, leaving attendants scratching their heads wondering if he knew Douglass — a self-liberated former enslaved male turned abolitionist — died in 1895. Expecting then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer to clarify what Trump meant regarding his comment on Douglass, Spicer, however, made it clear he, too, didn’t quite know if Douglass was dead.

“I think [Trump] wants to highlight the contributions he has made. And I think through a lot of the actions and statements he’s going to make, I think that the contributions of Frederick Douglass will become more and more.”

The remarks from both Trump and Spicer could have been an episode of “Drunk History,” a TV comedy series where an inebriated narrator fumbles to recount historical events, which illustrates why we need Black History Month and an intensive tutorial for Trump and his administration then and now.

Post-racial myth

With the election of Barack Obama as president, queries arose concerning the future need for Black History Month. Some millennials, in particular, whose ballots helped elect the country’s first African American president, revealed that celebrating Black History Month seemed outdated. To them, the continuation of Black History Month was a relic tethered to an old defunct paradigm of the 1960s Black civil rights era and hindered the country’s progress.

So, too, did Republican Senator Mitch McConnell agree in 2009. McConnell gave his reasons: the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 1965 Voting Rights Act enfranchised Black Americans, and the election of Barack Obama as the first Black president.

Obama’s candidacy was thought to have eradicated America’s Original Sin and marshaled in America’s dream of a “post-racial” era where race had finally become a “non-issue.” In trying to prove how post-racial Obama was as a presidential candidate, Michael Crowley of “The New Republic” wrote in his 2008 article, “Post-racial,” that it wasn’t only liberals who had no problem with Obama’s race but conservatives had no problem also, even the infamous ex-Klansman David Duke. “Even white Supremacists don’t hate Obama,” Crowley wrote about Duke. “[Duke] seems almost nonchalant about Obama, don’t see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton — or, for that matter, John McCain.”

Obama’s election encapsulated for some whites the physical and symbolic representation of Martin Luther King’s vision, uttered in his historic “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington. However, from the March, Black Americans saw the deliberate racist political misuse of King’s quote, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The quote has been used to discredit all race-based remedies for historical injustice. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Bakke case on “reverse discrimination” to stand. In 2023, it ended affirmative action in college admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. With reparations, critical race theory, African American history, and now DEI, Trump 2.0’s canceling of Black History Month comes as no surprise. He canceled all so-called “identity months.”

For years, the celebration of Black History Month, especially among white conservatives, has always brought up their ire around identity politics and special rights. Republican Senator John McCain argued that “special rights” were why he didn’t vote for the MLK holiday or acknowledge it until, of course, he ran against Obama for the presidency in 2008.

Identity politics and special rights, however, have always benefitted white Americans and perhaps people of color in Trump’s camp. In Trump’s first presidency, he removed white supremacist groups — the Ku Klux Klan, Identitarians, Identity Christianity, Neo-Nazis, and Neo-Confederates, to name a few — from the Countering Violent Extremism Program to profile Muslims. In this presidency, Trump gave all the January 6th insurrectionists a get-out-of-jail pardon. His action has emboldened his followers more than ever to not only contest the celebration of Black History Month but to insist on a white history month. The pushback against Black History Month is decades old.

Living while Black in Cambridge

Cambridge actively celebrates Black History Month, showcasing prominent historical figures. However, the city must also see its Black residents as neighbors. I reside in Cambridge.

In 2009, Cambridge resident, the renowned Harvard professor and PBS’s “Finding Your Roots” host Henry Louis Gates was arrested, which created an international scene and left a pox on Cambridge.

Cambridge is ranked as one of the most liberal cities in America. With two of the country’s premier institutions of higher learning — Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology — that draw students and scholars from around the world, Cambridge’s showcase of diversity and multiculturalism rivals that of the U.N.

However, when you scratch below Cambridge’s surface, there is also liberal racism that is as intolerant as Southern racism. Just like Southern racism that keeps Blacks in their place, liberal racism does, too.

For example, Cambridge’s liberal moneyed class maintains its racial and economic boundaries not by designated “colored” water fountains, toilets or restaurants, but by its zip codes. Harvard’s is 02138, where few Blacks and people of color reside. But Gates did.

Major street intersections are known as squares, like the renowned Harvard Square. The residential border areas are designated numbers like Area 4 (now known as the Port), a predominantly Black, poor and working-class enclave. The biotechnology and pharmaceutical boom has now gentrified it. Cambridge’s liberal money elite exploit these tensions by their claims to not see race until, of course, an unknown Black man appears in their neighborhood. Gates was arrested for breaking into his residential home in the Harvard Square area.

Still, we rise

During Black History Month, we gather to celebrate us. With 250 years of slavery, followed by 90 years of Jim Crow and 60 years of “separate but equal” discriminatory practices, we still rise. Our history is a canon for survival and an archive for future generations to pass along because our lived experiences are sacred texts. It’s Trump’s hubris to assume we need his permission to celebrate.

Rev. Irene Monroe is a public theologian, ordained minister and columnist. She can be heard on the podcast and standing Boston Public Radio segment ALL REV’D UP on GBH 89.7 FM. Her papers are at the Harvard/Radcliffe College’s Research Library on the History of Women in America.