The Importance of Celebrating Black History Month

Black History Month is more than a commemoration of past achievements—it is a time to recognize, reflect, and reaffirm the vital contributions of Black individuals to history, culture, and society. Too often, Black history is either erased, misrepresented, or reduced to a few key figures and moments. By dedicating a month to this history, we ensure that Black people's rich and complex narratives are acknowledged, celebrated, and woven into the broader story of humanity.

Celebrating Black History Month is also a call to action. It reminds us that the fight for racial justice and equality is ongoing. While we honor trailblazers like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless others, we must also recognize the present-day leaders, activists, and change-makers who continue to push for a more just and equitable world. Black history is not just about the past—it is a living, evolving force that shapes our present and future.

Moreover, Black History Month is for everyone. It provides an opportunity for all communities to learn, engage, and reflect on how systemic racism continues to impact society and what can be done to dismantle it—education and awareness foster understanding, empathy, and meaningful allyship. By uplifting Black voices, stories, and achievements, we honor the past and inspire future generations to build a world rooted in justice, equality, and shared humanity.

The GBC is looking for new steering committee members and other positions:

Steering committee:

Help plan and manage the events and activities of the GBC. Attending meetings. Other duties as required.

Communications team

Duties include social media posting, creating graphics, helping write newsletters or other documentation, and other duties as required. Ensuring special days/months are honored, attending meetings, and performing other duties as required.

Events team

Duties include developing, planning, and implementing events pertinent to GBC and intersectional causes, finding speakers for events and podcasts, and performing other duties as required.

GOTV/Outreach team

Duties include planning for the 2026 midterm elections, finding and developing relationships with other organizations that can help get out the vote, finding podcasts, social media influencers, etc., that we can appear on and get them to talk about the importance of the overseas vote, and other duties as required, such as attending meetings.

Podcast team

We need people who like to talk about current affairs, politics, and more. We also need people to edit our podcasts and perform other duties as required.

History/Research team

We are looking for a historian, professional or amateur, and people to do research.

You do not have to be African American to join or be a part of the GBC team.

Email [email protected] to apply. Please state clearly what position you are applying for and include your country of residence.

There are three more days left to vote. The next 3 days will determine the next 4 years.

I watched this video from Roland Martin. It was very motivational for getting people who could vote to vote. Although they spoke about Black people, I think this applies to everyone.

Every single vote matters. You can help not just with our vote but getting everyone we know to vote for Kamala Harris.

Please ask your friends and family to vote for Kamala Harris.
Ask them: Did you vote already? Or do you have a plan to vote? Don't take no for answer.

If they need a ride to the polls, they can get a ride from Rides to Vote in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

If people are hesitant to vote because of the situation in the Middle East, share this video with them from Bernie Sanders.

Also, please tell your women friends, they can vote any way they want. No one has to know how you vote.

I have been messaging my like-minded friends and family to make sure they have voted and should vote.

No one wants a repeat of 2016. Act, and we will win.

Angela Fobbs, Chair Global Black Caucus

The roots of a family brood lay

In the hopes and inspirations

Of dreams bred invoiced

Determining clan limbs

budding and prospering

Or stagnating while decaying

Kindred folk impart insistence

On hereditary adherence

Staunch values and traditions

Our conscientious cogent caretakers

Of primary childhood profiles

Which we imperceptibly evolve from

Or the training in coping before we do

Those fleeting illusory influences

Where we consider our innate assumptions

Which gives us our strengths and deficits

Trait dynamics primarily detrimental

The teachings that we ferociously consume

Until we are sufficiently strong enough

To separate differentiate and orientate

Those collected experiences into objectivity

Influenced by abstract compassion

And sometimes impatient thirsty love

Camille Elaine Thomas, December 2023

I was standing outside

Minding my own business

Taking in the stench of burnt marijuana

Watching the homeless bumming cigarettes

While the street workers loafed

And little children ran wantonly

Amongst each other while giggling insanely

I watched the old, tired women emerge

With bulky bags from the local supermarket

Talking into unseen earphones like aliens

Plodding down the stairs ponderously

Trying not to trip over sordid empty boxes

While the guards stood by and chuckled

Not really giving a damn about anything

I listened to the music blaring from the café

Where numerous office workers had gathered

To beat the cold, the rain, the boredom

Eating pecan pie and drinking from steamy paper cups

Faces engagingly animated with the last office gossip

Their elegant designer garments worn subconsciously

Like proud badges of privileged achievements

I watched while the birds flew around anxiously

Searching for the last grains of soggy edible

Distractions from the incessant traffic blast

Drilling noises from the street constructors

The sirens of speeding police cars blinking

While I kept standing by the open door

Still minding my own business.

Camille Elaine Thomas

December 2023

The Respect for Marriage Act ensures that not only same-sex marriages but also interracial marriages are enshrined in federal law.

The Supreme Court overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion reminds all of us, that whatever rights we have in this society are conditional — they can be taken away, and the fact that Congress had to take up this issue in 2022 should be a stark reminder of that fact for us.

The Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the Senate last week, had been picking up steam since June when the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion. That ruling included a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas that suggested the high court should review other precedent-setting rulings, including the 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

While much of the attention has been focused on protections for same-sex marriages, interracial couples are glad Congress also included protections for their marriages, even though their right to marry was well-established decades ago.

It’s a little unnerving that these things where we made such obvious progress are now being challenged or that we have to beef up the bulwark to keep them in place.

So many of those things that have just been taken for granted ... are under threat.

But why is Loving v. Virginia so significant? 

One day in the 1970s, Paul Fleisher and his wife were walking through a department store parking lot when they noticed a group of people looking at them. Fleisher, who is white, and his wife, who is Black, were used to “the look.” But this time it was more intense.

“There was this white family who was just staring at us, just staring holes in us,” Fleisher recalled.

That fraught moment occurred even though any legal uncertainty about the validity of interracial marriage had ended a decade earlier—in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws banning marriages between people of different races.

In more than half-century since interracial marriage has become more common and far more accepted. So Fleisher was surprised that Congress felt the need to include additional protection in the Respect for Marriage Act, which was given final approval in a House vote Thursday. It ensures that not only same-sex marriages but also interracial marriages are enshrined in federal law.

The 74-year-old Fleisher, a retired teacher and children’s book author, attended segregated public schools in the 1950s in the then-Jim Crow South and later saw what he called “token desegregation” in high school when four Black students were in his senior class of about 400 students.

He and his wife, Debra Sims Fleisher, 73, live outside Richmond, about 50 miles from Caroline County, where Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were arrested and charged in 1958 with marrying out of state and returning to Virginia, where interracial marriage was illegal. Their challenge to the law led to Loving v. Virginia, the landmark ruling that ended bans against interracial marriages.