How Black History Month Has Spread To Italy & Around The World
There is an urgency that runs from Modena to Milan, Rome to Bologna. Rahel Sereke, a founder of the Cambio Passo (“Changing Stride”) association and Milan city councilwoman, explains well: “holding together the historical dimension and the present.”
Sereke highlights the importance of understanding “what this history and this removal implies. That is: the presence of diasporas, their role in political battles, the influence of certain communities on certain neighborhoods, such as Milan’s Porta Venezia, which has a 40-year history of Eritrean and Ethiopian presence.”
The goal, as Ethiopian actress Selam Tesfaye says later is to understand colonialism’s pervasiveness.
Black History Month Florence in Italy
February is also the month of another important initiative of Italian Afrodescendants and the diaspora world: Black History Month. The origin is American, born in 1970, in the wake of the struggle for civil rights and to showcase African-American history. It has landed in Italy thanks to people such as Janine Gaëlle Dieudji and Justin Randolph Thompson, who launched the idea in Florence to celebrate Italian Afro-descendant excellence.
The practice then spread to other cities, including Bologna, Milan and Turin. Thompson, director of Black History Month Florence, noticed how much Italy was struggling to recognize its history and how Black presence was constantly marginalized in its history.
Officially, “Black History Month Florence” was born in 2016 with 19 events and 15 partners and has grown to 350 events today. In the city of Alessandro de Medici, Duke of Florence (who in 1523 became the first Afro-European head of state), realities have joined together, from famous DJ venues to schools and art galleries, creating initiatives at every step that have shaken the white Italian imagination. Take for example, “On Being Present,” a virtual gallery of African presence in famous masterpieces on display at the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti.
“But it wasn’t enough to talk about Black history every February,” Thompson says, “We had to do this work year-round.” And so in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, Black History Month Florence opened its research center “The Recovery Plan”, and began working
on various projects. Collaborations with New York University, Murate Art District and Villa Romana, gave birth to performances, debates and exhibitions. And at the same time, it worked on internal restitution, where through retreats, dinners, workshops, Afro-descendant and diaspora communities could finally network, create meaning and be together.
The struggle to embrace plurality
In a country like Italy that still struggles to embrace its plurality, grassroots, anti-racist movements like Black History Month and Yekatit 12 are revolutionary because they help the country finally look in the mirror beyond stereotypes.
It is no coincidence that one of the works kept in the past editions of Black History Month was the short film Il Moro by Daphne Di Cinto, an Afro-Italian director, screenwriter and actress (who appeared in the Netflix series Bridgerton). “Il Moro” tells the story of the Black duke of Florence (played by Alberto Boubakar Malanchino) whose very memory Black History Month helped exhume.
Yekatit 12 also has its own iconic book, which will be featured in many events this year: The Conscript by Ghebreyesus Hailu. Published in the 1950s, Hailu wrote the book in Rome at the height of fascism. It tells the story of an Eritrean conscript who, along with many like him, was sent by the Italians in 1911 to fight in Libya.
The added value of Black History Month and the Yekatit 12 network lie in the (re)discovery of words, music, texts, images. These events allow Italy, and its latent memory, to finally see itself as plural as ever. Finally all together.
Where else in the world do they have Black History Month?
The movement to follow the AfricanAmerican tradition of recognizing a month to Black History has picked up momentum over recent years, with a particular impetus following the spreading global consciousness of the Black Lives Matter after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Inevitably, it has been connected to Africa as well.
Still, the origins of internationalization of Black History Month goes back decades. Canada has recognized February as Black History Month since 1995 and Germany has since the early 1990s. In the UK (since 1987) and The Netherlands (where it is called “Black Achievement Month”) this celebration is observed in October. In recent years, Black History Month has started to appear in Ireland and Belgium, too, where it was launched by the African Youth Organization in 2017. The shared goal is to celebrate diversity while combating racism, discrimination and intolerance.
The basic idea does not focus on the recognition of Black history and its tremendous achievements being fitted in with the white and Eurocentric historiography, but instead stems primarily from the fundamental need to consider Black people as belonging to humanity. Black resistance has too much often been erased completely from the Western historic timeline even though colonialism and capitalism created a clear power relationship at the expense of marginalized communities.
Apart from these countries, the opportunity to reflect deeper on history in general has not yet spread and remains the center of cultural and political debates.
In Latin America, Black History Month is celebrated as what is known to be Heritage Month.
In South America, several countries have national days to celebrate the African diaspora there: in Venezuela May 10 is Afro-Venezuelan Day, in Colombia May 21 is Afro-Colombian Day, and Panama celebrates Black Ethnicity Day on May 31, to mark date on which, in 1820, Spanish King Ferdinand VII abolished the slave trade to his colonies. Brazil’s celebration, known as Black Awareness Day, is on Nov. 20 to honoring the death of Zumbi, an Afro-Brazilian resistance leader and freedom fighter.