Yes, you read that correctly. It’s Black/White History Month. We are midway through February, and everywhere you turn there’s a celebration of black people who made history in America. That’s fine, but where’s the context? How does skin pigmentation make history any more colorful than it already is? My favorite descendant of freed slavery is Frederick Douglass. Born a slave and self-taught to read as a teenager, Douglass broke his way into freedom by manhandling his slave breaker, Edward Covey. Covey beat Douglass halfway through an entire year, seeking to break his will to be free. One day, Douglass fought back and won a fight against Covey, leaving him feeling empowered. Not to mention, Douglass was beaten because the slave master’s (white) wife was secretly teaching him how to read using the Bible.

Conquering his fears and fighting for his freedom gave Douglass the confidence to urge other black men to enlist in the Union Army to fight the Confederacy. Douglass said: “You owe it to yourself! You will stand more erect…and be less liable to insult… You [will be] defending your own liberty, honor, manhood, and self-respect.” He was forged to blaze a trail for generations to come, all from a little ole white woman teaching him to read the Bible. What was her name? Why did she feel compelled to give Douglass the key to freedom in reading? Will she ever be portrayed in Black History Month? No … because the narrative is segregation, not inclusion.

Douglass would later befriend a man named William Lloyd Garrison, who would inspire Christian abolition, freedom, and redemption. Garrison was born in 1805 in Massachusetts, during a time in America when slaves were worth more than all manufacturing, steamship lines, railroads, and other transportation systems put together.

Garrison spoke boldly against slavery to the point of his life being threatened as he was often called a “Nigger Lover.” A bounty was put on his head by the federal government due to him speaking truth to power. In 1831, he published the first anti-slavery newspaper called The Liberator. How fitting. The first words spoke to the urgency of abolishing slavery:

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; —but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.

Just because southern whites used segregation to intimidate black communities doesn’t mean we have to fight fire with fire. Throughout history, Christian blacks and whites worked together to create the nation we enjoy to this day. Without the role of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and others like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Breecher Stowe, John Brown, and Angelina Gremke, the buildup to the Civil War would not have happened.

Had it not been for Christian white and black people coming together, slave owners would have turned the entire United States into a slave nation.

Welcome to Black/White History Month. Let us celebrate the history of America in black and white.