Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

2007 BHM Theme

The 2007 Black History Month theme, as designated by the Association for the Study of African AMerican Life and History, is "From Slavery to Freedom."

From the website:

The transition from slavery to freedom represents one of the major themes in the history of the African Diaspora in the Americas. Under and against the rule of various powers, Africans experienced emancipation during the course of the nineteenth century. In Jamaica and Brazil, freedom came peaceably, but bloodshed also accompanied slavery’s death. In the United States, the rebirth of freedom resulted from what was at the time the world’s most destructive civil war, a war in which liberated slaves and free Blacks played a vital role in determining the victor and securing their own liberty. In Saint Domingue, the slaves, under the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture, engaged in violent revolution and won their freedom and independence, establishing Haiti, the world’s first Black republic. Regardless of the path to freedom, African peoples in the New World had to continue to struggle for liberation. Where ex-slaves formed the majority, the quest for sovereignty, independence, and equality remained elusive or hollow. Elsewhere they rarely enjoyed equal citizenship and the untrammeled right to pursue happiness.

ASALH dedicates its 2007 national theme to the struggles of peoples of African descent to achieve freedom and equality in the Americas during the age of emancipation. Over a half-century ago, the celebrated historian John Hope Franklin, a leading light of ASALH, identified the struggle for slavery and freedom as the central theme of African American history. We take up this theme to honor him and to place before the nation and the world the historical importance of slavery and freedom in the making of modern societies in the Americas.

Posted by perry032 at February 3, 2007 08:51 PM