Family History is Black History Too: How Your Family’s Stories are In Line with the BHM Tradition
By: Jahna Riley
Tags: Family History, Black History Month

Family History is Black History Too: How Your Family’s Stories are In Line with the BHM Tradition Jahna Riley Follow Feb 14 · 3 min read

Many of us learned about how Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in 1926, for the purpose of celebrating and sharing the contributions and accomplishments of Black people. He chose February because Black folk were already celebrating the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, and in doing so, he hoped to extend an already standing tradition. Dr. Woodson’s desire was that Negro History Week, which later became Black History Month, would become a culminating celebration of study that occurred throughout the year. Dr. Woodson “…believed that history was made by the people, not simply or primarily by great men.”

I believe that those people who made up Dr. Woodson’s history are our people. Not just the people we learn about via documentaries and books. No, they’re our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. They’re our neighbors, our clergy, and our educators. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that it is just as important to learn my personal, family, and community histories, as it is to honor BHM stalwarts like Harriet Tubman and Dr. King, and even lesser-known people like Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker.

One of my most favorite family traditions is “The Telling of the Stories” — no one calls it that, but everyone knows what it is. After our bodies have been nourished, we feed our souls with stories about family members who are physically no longer with us, but whose spirits live on.

O.C. and Jessie Mae Riley, affectionately known as Pa-Pa and Gran-Gran, were married for over 50 years.

On special occasions, my dad will break out the handwritten memoir of my Pa-Pa, “Country Boy Comes to Town”. In it he details how he sold his general store in Tatums, Oklahoma, an all black town a la Eatonville — made famous in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, and moved to Kansas to marry my Gran-Gran after meeting her once. This was no small feat, considering that my Gran-Gran made history as the first Black licensed cosmetologist in Atchison, KS, and even owned her own salon called the Cosme-Tee. The story (and its re-telling) has become a part of our family mythology. The Riley family, in all of our down-to-earth glory, would not be here, had a country boy not decided to make that move.

Many of us are fortunate to have stories like this. They are told at family gatherings, around the dining room, and kitchen, and card, and picnic tables. They are inside jokes and running references that are a part of the fabric of our families and communities. They are small reminders that we come from amazing and brilliant people who always found a way to survive and thrive.

3 generations later, the Riley family continues. Here are my father, brother, and me with my daughter and niece.

By continuing the traditions of telling these stories, we’re not only passing down our family and community histories, we are in direct alignment with what Dr. Woodson wanted for us — “ the study and celebration of the Negro as a race, not simply as the producers of [great men]”.

Happy Black History Month!

The 2018 Riley Family Reunion continues a tradition that began in the 1960s.

Source: ASALH — The Origins of Black History Month

The opinions expressed in this blog posting are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Surge Institute.