02/05/2026
Black History Month Reflection
When did we, as a Black community, begin to speak the colonizer’s language about Black women?
When did beautiful, strong, empowering, resilient, and purposeful become distorted into “masculine,” “too demanding,” or “standards too high”?
Black women have always been co-architects of freedom.
We endured slavery alongside our men—laboring, resisting, surviving.
We ran for freedom and returned for others, like Harriet Tubman, because liberation was never meant to be individual.
We stood shoulder to shoulder in the Civil Rights Movement, taking the same blows, like Amelia Boynton Robinson on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
We chose justice over comfort, like Dr Gloria Wade-Gayles, who refused to separate scholarship from struggle—even at personal cost.
And we led on the world stage with grace, discipline, and intellect, like Michelle Obama, advancing childhood health, global education, and access to higher learning—while enduring scrutiny meant to shrink her.
This language did not originate with us—but it has been recycled within us.
Black women have always been strong—never at the expense of beauty.
We have always had standards—because we know our worth.
We have always been resilient—because resistance is our inheritance, not our burden.
So during Black History Month, we tell the truth:
Check the narratives you repeat.
Check whose language you borrow.
Check who benefits when Black women are diminished instead of defended.
Because honoring Black history means honoring Black women—fully, fiercely, and without apology.
