BHM should be renamed ‘accurate history month'

Marcus Ryder, The Independent

Almost every Black British person I speak to has had a ‘lightbulb moment’ at some point in their lives, where they realise they have a false understanding of their own history, writes Marcus Ryder As a Black man, I have always loved Black History Month (BHM), but now I am a father of a six-year-old Black boy, it has become even more important in my life.

As much as I love Black History Month, I would like to rename it as “accurate history month”. The truth is that you cannot have a proper understanding of British and global history without fully incorporating the importance of Black people into every part of it.

Almost every Black British person I speak to has had a “lightbulb moment” at some point in their lives, where they realise that they have a false understanding of their own history.

Earlier this year, I co-edited the book Black British Lives Matter with Lenny Henry, where we highlighted the importance of Black people in every aspect of British life from “Black British Journalists Matter” to “Black British Comedians Matter”.

In the chapter “Black British Historians Matter”, the historian David Olusoga talks about his lightbulb moment when, as a child, his whole understanding of the Second World War and his Nigerian heritage was turned on its head.

Olusoga describes how growing up he was obsessed with the war: “We used to play all the time with our plastic Airfix soldiers. The magazines and comics we read were all about it… It was a major part of British culture growing up.” Then one day his mother told him that there is a memorial to Nigerians in Lagos who fought and died in the war for Britain.

“I struggled with this new bit of information, I had loads of plastic Airfix soldiers, and I remember very clearly going back and scrutinising these soldiers, very carefully. I had a box of British Eighth Army soldiers. The Eighth Army was the army that fought under Montgomery in North Africa. And on the cover of the box was a picture — a painting of those soldiers fighting in the desert — and I remember spending hours looking at that box and seeing all those white soldiers. And so, I naturally presumed that the Eighth Army was made up of white men.

“In reality, it was actually one of the most multicultural forces ever brought into existence. When my mother said people of your father’s ethnicity, Yoruba Nigerians, fought in that war, fighting alongside Indians and people from the West Indies, and other parts of the British Empire, it didn’t make sense. So that was a catalytic moment for me.”

Lenny Henry also talks about his lightbulb moment when he was asked to open an event in the West Midlands; “I opened the Black Country archive, and a man came up to me and said, ‘Hold this flag’; I looked down, and I saw these chains (featured on the flag). And thought to myself: ‘We’re talking about how the Black Country participated in the industrial revolution and we made chains here: what was the predominant use for chains during that period?’ It must have been for the purposes of slavery — that whole thought process for me was shocking. A massive penny drop from on high.”

For me, too often Black History Month is framed in terms of featuring Black heroes such as Mary Seacole or Bob Marley. And while it is important to profile these important figures, what Olusoga and Henry’s lightbulb moments illustrate is that far too many of us grow up with an inaccurate understanding of national and global history.

The truth is you cannot understand the history of the Second World War without understanding the role African troops played. Our understanding of the industrial revolution is incomplete if it does not feature the history of slavery and colonialism.

Nearly all of us have these Black British history lightbulb moments — and they aren’t just one-offs — throughout our lives, as we continue to uncover parts of history that were either deliberately or inadvertently covered up. My most recent personal lightbulb moment came two years ago when my son had a pirate-themed party. It was only then that I realised that many of the pirates that sailed the Caribbean were actually African — often fugitive slaves — the most famous of which was “Black Caesar” who terrorised merchant navy ships in the 1700s. Of course, when you think about it, considering that the Caribbean was a major destination for enslaved Africans, it makes perfect sense. But up until that moment, my understanding of the history of pirates was simply wrong.