Origins of Black History Month and the 2023 National Theme

The observance of Black History Month dates back to almost 100 years ago as one of many opportunities in the United States to recognize and reflect on the rich history, culture, and contributions of African Americans in Brevard County and across our nation.

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, known as the “Father of Black History,” founded The Association for the Study and Life of African American History (ASALH) organization in 1915 and began promoting what was previously titled Negro History Week in 1926 during the second week of February, to celebrate the birthdays of two men who had greatly impacted the freedom of African Americans - Frederick Douglas and President Abraham Lincoln. Over the decades, the week-long celebration evolved into a month-long celebration and year-round observance of African American History as American History. In 1928, ASALH began a tradition of implementing a yearly theme as an additional focus for public attention on areas that are important to focus on as a community and educate the nation. Video highlighting the timeline of Black History Month origins through present day - https://asalh.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Black-History-Month-Timeline.mp4

The 2023 National Black History Month theme is “Black Resistance”. This theme acknowledges how African Americans have resisted oppression throughout history and continue to be inspired to elevate access, achievements, and contributions to society.   

         
Image Sources: www.asalh.org and www.diversitystore.com

During February and throughout the year, BPS incorporates learning across the curriculum and all grade levels to empower our students to be more enriched and appreciative of one another.  We are honored to offer an African American Studies elective course at four of our high schools to further enrich our student's learning - Cocoa High, Rockledge High, Heritage High, and Palm Bay High.  This year also marks the inaugural instruction of the new BPS Moore Legacy Curriculum which honors the lives and legacy of Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore, further advancing our instruction of African American history both in and out of the classroom throughout our schools.  Please see the spotlights and opportunities below to be a part of the observance.  Additional information will be added throughout the month.

Florida Launches the 2023 Black History Month Student and Educator Contests

The Florida Department of Education and Volunteer Florida officially launched the 2023 Black History Month student art and essay contests with the theme of “Celebrating the Achievements of African American Floridians.”  These contests will run through Tuesday, February 7, 2023.   First Lady DeSantis invites students to participate in academic and creative contests throughout the month.  Additionally, students, parents, teachers, and principals are invited to nominate full-time educators of all student grades for the Black History Month Excellence in Education Award.

“African Americans have a long and proud history in our great state of Florida, and Black History Month is the perfect occasion to celebrate their many achievements. Learning about African American achievements is central to learning about Florida and America itself. I have no doubt that this year’s art and essay contest submissions will be outstanding.” - Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, Jr.

About the Student Art Contest

Governor Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Black History Month Art Contest is open to all kindergarten through third-grade students in Florida. Each student will submit original, two-dimensional artwork based on this year's theme. Four statewide winners will be selected, and each winner will receive a $100 art supplies gift card and a 1-year pass to Florida state parks.

About the Student Essay Contest

Governor Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Black History Month Essay Contest is open to all fourth through twelfth-grade students in Florida. Each student will submit one essay no longer than 500 words based on this year’s theme and are encouraged to write about an African American who has had a notable effect on their community. The subject of the essay should be an African American Floridian.  Six winners will be selected - two elementary school students (grades 4–5), two middle school students (grades 6–8), and two high school students (grades 9–12). Each winner will receive a 2–year Florida College Plan scholarship provided by the Florida Prepaid College Foundation and a $100 gift card for school supplies. 

About the Excellence in Education Award

Governor Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Black History Month Excellence in Education Award Contest is open to all full-time educators in an elementary, middle, or high school in Florida. Four winners will be selected, and a principal, teacher, parent/guardian, or student may submit nominations.  Excellence in Education award winners will receive $2,500 from Volunteer Florida.

For more information about the contests, resources, and to submit an entry form, please visit http://floridablackhistory.com/. 

33rd Annual National African American Read-In

The National African American Read-In (AARI) is a groundbreaking effort to encourage communities to read together, centering on African American books and authors. It was established in 1990 by the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English to make literacy a significant part of Black History Month. This initiative has reached more than 6 million participants around the world. To learn more about this initiative, visit African American Read-In - National Council of Teachers of English (ncte.org).

Participating BPS Schools:

Tropical Elementary

Suntree Elementary

Check out all of the great events and activities happening across our district!

Click on the Flyers below -

School Events and Activities:

Bayside High School

Cocoa High School

Cocoa will host an annual Black History Celebration and Breakfast with a guest speaker.

Jackson Middle School

Jackson will host an African drum lesson and their Annual Door Decorating contest that allows each class to elevate their learning of Black History and Culture.  This year’s theme of events highlights the rich history and culture of Africa and African Americans before the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.  

Heritage High School

Stone Magnet Middle School

Palm Bay Magnet High School

Black History Month Door Decorating Competition Photos https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZwF_538NXttpacNDbqPMknmMVGNUCtEz-bFw739Ht1w/edit?usp=sharing 

Additional events and activities throughout the district will be added to this page, as submitted. Please contact each school directly or visit their website to learn more about their programming.

Sydney Aitcheson

The Brevard Alliance of Black School Educators (BrevardABSE) began in 2017 with a mission to enhance and facilitate the education and social development of all students in Brevard County, with a particular focus on African-American students.  The alliance is open to all Brevard County educators and is proud to have membership that spans from early childhood educators to post-secondary educators in the community.  

This year, Brevard ABSE will host its first Black History Month Contest in conjunction with the National Black History Month Observance founded by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).  

2023 Black History Month Contest - Open to all 7-12 Grade Students

To learn more, visit https://brevardallianceofs.wixsite.com/brevardabse

Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore
(Educators, Activists)

Before Brown v. Board of Education and public activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks began their leadership in the civil rights movement - there was Harry T. Moore and his wife, Harriette.  Two of Brevard County's well-revered educators and civil rights activists. To learn more about The Moores and how BPS is honoring their legacy, visit https://www.brevardschools.org/Page/18220.

Rosa Lee Jones

Educator, Journalist, Radio Personality, and Civil Rights Activist

(2/26/1907 - 12/2/2008)

Rosa Lee Jones was born in Quincy, Florida, a small agricultural community in the Panhandle and became a woman of many firsts.  She graduated from high school in Tallahassee, two years after women were granted the right to vote nationally, and enrolled at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Later, she graduated with a business degree from Tampa's Walker College of Business. She moved to Cocoa in 1925 as an educated black woman, when few African American women were able to complete college.  After attending Brevard Community College, she became a kindergarten teacher. In a society where African Americans were educated separately, Jones wanted to assist mothers and other people in finding educational support for their kids. She originally created a small kindergarten in her home. She also became the first Black Girl Scout Leader in Brevard.  Then, in the 1960s, she mortgaged her home to open the Rosebud Kindergarten and Child Care Center. Thus, making her the first African-American woman to own and operate a licensed kindergarten and day care center.

Not only was she an educator, but she was also a journalist and a pioneer for civil rights. She was a well-respected writer and spokeswoman in the African American community of Cocoa, and as a contributing editor to The Script, the city's second black community newspaper, and The Brevard, she kept the neighborhood up to date on important issues and social developments. She worked to mobilize the educational community, register black Floridians to vote, and spark a movement; in 1934, she assisted Harry T. Moore in establishing Brevard County's first NAACP chapter. She received praise for her work as a journalist, educator, and civil rights activist up until her passing in 2008 at 101 years old. In 2021, Cocoa City Officials unveiled a mural in her honor at the roundabout on Brevard Avenue and the east end of the long and winding road named in her honor in 1999. 

“May we, out of hearts of love and concern in feeding the human spirit, respect each other more, recognize each other’s rights as human beings, acknowledge each other’s dignity.” - Rosa Lee Jones 1993 speech to the South Brevard Chapter of the National Organization for Women

Fannie Lou Hamer

American Civil Rights Activist, Economic Development Advocate

10/06/1917 - 03/14/1977

Fannie Lou Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi and later developed polio at the age of 16,  which led to a life-long disability.  In her mission to advocate for equality and fair treatment of all, she spent years participating in peaceful protests and later helped create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to address voter suppression. Hamer later joined Mississippi's first integrated delegation, and in 1964 Hamer helped organize Freedom Summer - an initiative to assist African Americans in registering to vote in the segregated South. She later took part in founding the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971.  In 1969, she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC), which became one of Sunflower County's top employers, by purchasing 640 acres of land that Black citizens could own and farm.  She was solely responsible for the construction of 200 units of low-income housing. The FFC came to an end in the mid-1970s upon Hamer's passing in 1977.

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer

Josiah T. Walls

Military Veteran, Former United States Representative

12/30/1842 - 05/15/1905

Josiah Walls was born enslaved in Winchester, Virginia. When the Civil War broke out, he was forced to serve in the Confederate Army. He then enlisted in the United States Colored Troops in 1863, serving as a corporal in the Third Infantry Regiment. After leaving the service, he was discharged in Florida and then he joined the Republican Party and served a term in the Florida House and then two in the Florida Senate. He was the only Black Representative from Florida until the early 1990s, making him the first African American to serve his state in Congress. When he wasn't defending his position in Congress, Walls worked to change Florida's internal policies. "We demand that our lives, our liberties, and our property shall be protected by the strong arm of our government, that it gives us the same citizenship that it gives to those who it seems would... sink our every hope for peace, prosperity, and happiness into the great sea of oblivion," he said in support of mandatory education and equal economic opportunity for all races.

Ruby Bridges

American Civil Rights Activist, Living Legend

Ruby Bridges was born on September 8, 1954, the same year of the US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas. They ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional; however, not many southern states were keen on the idea and resisted integration. A year later, a federal court ordered Louisiana to desegregate and Ruby, with five additional students, passed the district developed entrance exams for the African American students willing to integrate. At the age of six, Ruby Bridges became the first African American student to be integrated into an all-white elementary school, McDonough Elementary School. Every day that year, four federal marshals took Ruby and her mother to school. Ruby could only take classes with Barbara Henry, a white Boston resident, since no other teacher would accept her. Ruby occasionally played with her teacher during recess and ate lunch alone that year, but she never missed a day of class. The Bridges family suffered considerably because Ruby's education was the subject of intense public debate. Ruby later developed into a devoted advocate for racial equality and founded the Ruby Bridges Foundation in 1999 to encourage tolerance and bring about change via education, which she still leads today. She was later appointed an honorary deputy marshal in a ceremony in Washington, DC, in the year 2000.

Augusta Savage

American Sculptor

02/29/1892 - 03/26/1962

On February 29, 1892, Augusta Christine Fells, later Augusta Savage, was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida. She was an American sculptor and educator who battled racism to secure a place for African American women in the art world. In 1915, she moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, where she thrived artistically and received much local encouragement for her clay pieces.  She was selected for a summer program at Fontainebleau, outside of Paris, but the French rejected her candidacy due to her race; however, committee member Hermon A. MacNeil disagreed with the choice and he personally asked Savage to study under him.  After finding success creating a Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois portrait in the 1920s and the Gamin (1929), she was awarded a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, which finally allowed her to study in Paris from 1929 to 1931. She returned to New York in 1932 following the Great Depression and opened the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem.  She was appointed the Harlem Community Art Center's first director in 1937 when the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) created it. A large number of young black artists' development was greatly aided by the Harlem art center and Savage pushed successfully for black artists' inclusion in WPA projects. In the late 1930s, Savage received a commission to create a sculpture for the 1939 New York World's Fair. She then created "The Harp", which was influenced by James Weldon Johnson's poem "Lift Every Voice and Sing” making it one of her most well-known pieces. She retired and left the art world in the 1940s and moved to a farm in Saugerties, New York.

• African American History and Culture in the United States  https://edsitement.neh.gov/teachers-guides/african-american-history-and-culture-united-states
  
  
• Black History Month - Library of Congress https://blackhistorymonth.gov
  
  
• Black History https://www.history.com/topics/black-history
  
  
• Black History Month - Kids National Geographic https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/black-history-month
  
  
• Florida Black History 2023 Page http://floridablackhistory.com/
  
  
• Florida's Commisioner of Education African American History Task Force https://afroamfl.org/
  
  
• Florida Memory State Library and Archives - Black History https://www.floridamemory.com/learn/exhibits/photo_exhibits/black_history/
  
  National Museum of African American History and Culture https://nmaahc.si.edu/
  
  
• Smithsonian Education - Black History https://learninglab.si.edu/search/?f%5B_types%5D%5B%5D=ll_collection&st=black%20history&s=&page=1
  
  
• Look Beyond Struggle to Celebrate Black Achievement (2022) https://www.edutopia.org/article/look-beyond-struggle-celebrate-black-achievement