History Written in Skin

Black history is not a month. Black history is the woman who sat down and the man who stood up and the children who walked into schools that didn't want them with backpacks full of courage and shoes their mothers polished like armor. It is the music that saved a culture— the blues that named the pain, the jazz that refused to be predictable, the hip-hop that took nothing and turned it into everything and the everything still wasn't enough. It is the names we know— King, Parks, Tubman— and the millions we don't, who built this country with hands that were never thanked and backs that were never straightened by the freedom they were promised. They tell us: get over it. As if history is a puddle you can step across and not an ocean you're still swimming in. Black history is not February. Black history is every day that someone wakes up Black in a country that asked for their labor, their music, their culture, their genius— and gave back a month.