Correction:
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Silas Ashley. The article has been updated.
More than five decades ago, one of the first Black History Month celebrations was held at Kent State University.
It was filled with special programs that focused on educating participants about African American culture. The February 1970 events led with the opening of a Black Culture Center and included lectures from Babatunde Olatunji, a Nigerian drummer and founder of the first Center of African Culture in the U.S., and Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Kent State was among institutions such as Rhodes College and University of the Pacific that celebrated Black history for a full month, said Dr. Daryl Michael Scott, historian at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and a U.S. history professor at Morgan State University.
Today, Black History Month is celebrated nationally. President Gerald Ford officially recognized it in 1976, encouraging recognition of the often-neglected accomplishments of Black Americans.
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Civil unrest led to Black History Month at Kent State
A group called Black United Students, via organized protests, mass walkouts, building takeovers and demonstrations, kept the pressure on Kent State’s administration.
A lack of Black representation in courses and on the faculty led to student protests calling for more special events and more invitations for Black speakers to visit the university.
Students hosted Black History Week in 1969, the year before Black History Month was first acknowledged at the university. This was a week that “featured programmatic efforts,” where Black speakers visited campus to speak to and lecture students.
That week, there was a Black Arts Festival with poetry read by student poets, music, fashion shows with African styles and patterns, and plays performed by the Malcolm X Freedom School, according to reports in The Daily Kent Stater, the university’s student newspaper.
Black History Week was similar to Negro History Week, founded in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, an American historian who also founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (the group also claims to be the founder of Black History Month).
Negro History Week highlighted the contributions of Black Americans while BUS’s Black History Week focused on both educating and recognizing African American culture.
During the celebration of Black History Week at Kent State, the idea to celebrate Black history for an entire month came upat a heated meeting. Kent State students Dwayne White and Carl Gregory, who later adopted Muslim names, brought the idea of Black History Month to Dr. Edward W. Crosby and Dean Milton E. Wilson, professors at Kent State at that time.
White and Gregory, now Ibrahim Al-Khafiz and Saiti Dihati, were members of BUS and had not thought of Black History Month as a national holiday, according to Silas Ashley, the former president of the Black Alumni Group at Kent State.
BUS activism intended to raise racial, civil and political consciousnesses
“I can say that, as BUS activists, we didn’t think in terms of government-sanctioned holidays,” said Mwatabu Okantah, an alumnus, professor and the current chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Kent State.
“The government was a part of the problem,” he added. “We were more concerned with raising the racial, cultural and political consciousness of our peers on campus in particular and throughout the larger Black community in general.”
The civil unrest happening on Kent State’s campus and in the nation at the time motivated White and Gregory to consider celebrating Black history for an entire month. The Black Panther Party and Oakland Police Department’s conflict and arrests weighed heavily on BUS, since some of its objectives were shared with the Black Panther Party. Oakland police department recruiters came to Kent State, sparking a mass walkout to Akron in protest.
Wilson, the dean, added Black History Month to the university’s official calendar of events — the next year Kent State celebrated the first Black History Month beginning on Feb. 1.
Shifting priorities from track to activism
For Okantah, 1970 was a mix of running collegiate track and fighting for equality. As he finished his senior year in high school in Orange, New Jersey, the May 4 shootings happened at Kent State.
Members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of students demonstrating against the escalation of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Four students were killed and nine were wounded. Because of the shootings, Okantah never got to visit campus before starting school, but he decided to attend anyway.
“I didn’t know what was going on on campus,” Okantah said, “But I knew what was going on in the country.”
Once Okantah, then Wilbur Smith Jr., got to campus, he was swooped up by and met students who were involved with Black United Students (BUS), an organization formed in 1968 that was committed to eliminating adversity for students. His priorities quickly shifted from track and field to activism and writing empowering poetry.
Okantah injured his knees a year into running — a member of BUS gave him a copy of Richard Wright’s novel “Native Sun” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” while he was hospitalized. Reading the two works changed his life forever, he said. He realized that writing poetry was his passion.
He ran track for the next three years, then dropped out to become a travelling poet and storyteller. Okantah produced poetry about the African experience, essays that detailed his personal experience with self-discovery and books with collections of his poetry.
“When I got that F for not writing a poem [in high school], if someone had told me that I would grow up to write 10 books of poetry,” he said. “Like, what the hell are you talking about? Not me,” Okantah said with a laugh.
BUS inspired Okantah’s path to poetry — it was also an integral piece of Black History Month being celebrated on the Kent State campus for six years before it was recognized nationally.
“I was mesmerized and in awe of the militant group spirit they exuded,” Okantah wrote in “OUR STORY Black History Month, Black United Students and Kent State.”
Current student: Black History Month at Kent State today
Brooklynn Seavers, the secretary of Black United Students (BUS) and a junior at Kent State, became acclimated to Kent State through a program called Kupita Transiciónes (KT), where students of color met on campus before the rest of the freshman class arrived.
This program, which was eliminated by Ohio Senate Bill 1’s bans on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education, allowed Seavers to feel seen, she said, and ultimately prompted her to join BUS.
The end of the KT program as well as the elimination of funding for Black organizations triggered a shift in what Black History Month looks like at the university, Seavers said.
It looks more like legacy events such as a brunch with alumni and masquerade-themed balls and self-love conversations surrounding skin tones for current students, she said.
“There recently have been a lot of people who aren’t really as comfortable in their skin,” Seavers said.
“So, you can’t really move on in life without realizing what your skin means.”
Despite how Black History Month has evolved, Tameka Ellington, one of the first Black professors at Kent State’s Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman School of Fashion Design and Merchandising, encourages others to continue to celebrate Black History.
Black United Students today
BUS’s programming has looked different since the implementation of Senate Bill 1 and its removal of DEI efforts throughout the university, according to Seavers and Ellington.
BUS and other Black organizations on campus protested and collected signatures in an effort to block SB1 because of how it would impact the campus and each organization, especially incoming students who are adjusting to a predominantly white institution.
“A lot of people retell stories to their younger siblings, to their friends about that experience [of KT], ” Seavers said. “And it was something that some were looking forward to.”
“And to find out that the funding is gone and we can’t have it [KT] — it was very unfortunate for the upperclassmen and the new incomers.”
While celebrations evolve, how communities celebrate and continue to educate themselves and others on African American culture is up to them.
“I think the strength lies in the people,” Ellington said.
“And the people not being afraid to still celebrate.”