Black History Month: Celebrating the arts

(Children’s Defense Fund) – Every year, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the organization established in 1915 by the “Founder of Black History Month” Dr. Carter G. Woodson, designates a theme for the observance of Black History Month, and the 2024 theme is African Americans and the Arts. As ASALH says, “In the fields of visual and performing arts, literature, fashion, folklore, language, film, music, architecture, culinary and other forms of cultural expression, the African American influence has been paramount. African American artists have used art to preserve history and community memory as well as for empowerment. Artistic and cultural movements such as the New Negro, Black Arts, Black Renaissance, hip-hop, and Afrofuturism, have been led by people of African descent and set the standard for popular trends around the world … For centuries Western intellectuals denied or minimized the contributions of people of African descent to the arts as well as history, even as their artistry in many genres was mimicked and/or stolen. However, we can still see the unbroken chain of Black art production from antiquity to the present, from Egypt across Africa, from Europe to the New World … In celebrating the...