Black History Month actually started as a week.
Carter Godwin Woodson, historian, author, journalist and founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1915, began Negro History Week in 1926, choosing February because abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass was born on Feb. 14 and President Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 12. In 1976, President Gerald Ford expanded Negro History Week to Black History Month.
To celebrate the month, let’s look at a few facts that may be unfamiliar:
– The highest ratio of black-owned businesses in the U.S. is in Washington, D.C., where 28 percent of all businesses are owned by African-Americans. The second-highest ratio is in Georgia, where 20 percent of all businesses are owned by African-Americans.
– From 1664 until 1967, interracial marriages were against the law in the United States. In 1958, Richard Loving, who was white, and Mildred Jeter, who was black, were married in Washington, D.C., but were arrested when they returned home to Virginia because they’d broken the state’s law against interracial marriage. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1967 that such laws were unconstitutional.