Each February, Black History Month celebrates the achievements, culture, and enduring contributions of African Americans to our nation and the African diaspora. It is a time to recognize accomplishments that have shaped every facet of American life – and that too often go underrecognized.
Colorado has its own powerful legacy of Black pioneers and leaders whose stories deserve celebration. Barney Ford, born enslaved, became a prominent entrepreneur and civil rights advocate known as the “Baron of Colorado.” James Beckwourth, mountain man and fur trader, helped found Pueblo. Elizabeth Piper Ensley fought tirelessly for women’s suffrage. Oliver Toussaint Jackson established the Dearfield agricultural settlement in 1887. Fannie May Duncan championed peaceful integration in Colorado Springs.
These stories define our state’s character – resilience, innovation, and the relentless pursuit of equality.
Yet this Black History Month arrives at a moment of profound alarm. The current presidential administration is engaged in a sweeping effort to diminish these narratives and undermine those fighting for representation and justice.
President Trump recently posted on social media a meme he claimed referenced The Lion King, depicting the Obamas as apes – a racist trope long used to dehumanize Black Americans. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the only Black Republican in the Senate, condemned it, posting that he was “praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.” Criticism by Republicans of the president is rare.
Scott is the only Black member of the 100-member U.S. Senate. (Only 26 women serve in that chamber.) Representation matters. When the halls of power fail to reflect the nation, whose voices are elevated – and whose are sidelined?
The administration’s posture extends beyond rhetoric. Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook has faced sustained political attacks. On Jan. 29, journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were arrested while covering a protest at a St. Paul church. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board were removed from their posts. The pattern signals a government comfortable targeting those who challenge or diversify traditional power structures.
We have felt the impact locally. Last October in Durango, ICE agents detained a Colombian man and his two children. The fear lingers. This week, Superintendent Karen Cheser reported that the Durango School District has lost 150 students — nearly $1.8 million in funding. An unknown number of those students are English Language Learners. The decline comes amid heightened immigration enforcement, rising costs of living and slowing population growth in Colorado (Herald, Jan. 28). With them go families, friends and neighbors once woven into our schools, places of worship and businesses.
At the national level, executive orders have directed federal institutions to scale back exhibits examining slavery and racism. The revived 1776 Commission promotes a sanitized vision of “patriotic education.” Diversity, equity and inclusion programs have been dismantled. Confederate monuments are again defended as heritage rather than symbols of oppression.
Critics argue these actions hollow out the enforcement spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – landmark legislation shepherded through Congress by President Lyndon Johnson, a Southern Democrat whom few expected would become the architect of modern civil rights protections. The contrast today is stark: an era that expanded civil rights versus one that appears intent on narrowing them.
But retrenchment and erasure are not new chapters in American history. Black Americans – and all who have fought for equality – have faced suppression before. They have organized, resisted, and prevailed before, like the people of Minneapolis.
As civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” Freedom is collective. Inequality for one ultimately constrains liberty for all.
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