Thank you, ASAHL
My BIG, BEAUTIFUL Adventure
in Boycotting
The Goal: To Spend Joyfully and with Purpose
By Chalmer Thompson
February 4 2026
In oppressive, conflict-ridden societies around the world, people in powerful positions have taken measures to erase and distort history. From ritualized book burnings, developing untruthful curriculum for masses of schoolchildren, and demolishing the homes and other structures where the undesirable people lived, to erecting monuments of those who led in the destruction of human lives, it is clear that the people obsessed with controlling others recognized the significance of creating history. Historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that these acts of “silencing the past” become part of everyday life and can become ingrained in people’s psyches and beliefs about the world, even among those whose ancestral histories are targeted.
The main purpose of the deceit and malice is for those in power to try to diminish, even deaden, the lives of humans whose collective existence serves as a painful reminder of the powerful’s role in perpetuating oppression in the service of their own egos. Fortunately, these acts have not been entirely successful.
Going back to an earlier blog post, this is just a reminder that resistance matters.
For this Black History Month, I want to share the message below by Karsonya Wise Whitehead, president of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH). It says it all.
And thank you, Chapter Elder Dorothy Simpson-Taylor, for sending me Dr. Wise Whitehead’s message. Your gifts to me are always timely and precious.
Finally, dear reader, if you are so disposed, continue boycotting products and services from entities whose policies and practices go against your values. In your journey, you may learn, as I have, that you can spend less (as you discover that your need for “things” decreases) without feeling deprived, and become ever more alert to the pleasure of doing business with a cadre of selected vendors who share most or all of your values.
May you also live life joyously in the present.
Chalmer
Black History Month Challenge: Day #3
Become a Gardener:
Help Us to Dig Up Our Past & Plant Some Seeds
In 1925, Arturo Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” wrote that the American Negro must remake the past in order to make his future. History, he noted, has to restore what slavery took away.
I would add, now that we have a longer eye of history, that history has to restore what was also taken away during the nadir and during the Vietnam War; during the modern Civil Rights Movement and during Black Lives Matter 1.0 and 2.0; and, what they are currently working to take away from us (through book bannings, removing historical artifacts, censoring Black History curricula, and the ongoing attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion). We must do the hard work of both teaching our history and controlling the narrative.
At this moment, we need everyone to intentionally become a gardener and help us plant the seeds for trees that will never give us shade. We are planting trees for future generations, and by doing so, we are joining a long line of gardeners who have come before us.
We are all sitting under the trees planted by leaders like
Williams Wells Brown, born around 1814 on a plantation outside Lexington, KY, who claimed his freedom in 1834 and became the first Black person to publish in several major literary genres;
Pauli Murray, the first Black person to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School, who coined the term “Jane Crow,” and whose 1950 book States' Laws on Race and Color was called the "bible" of the civil rights movement by Thurgood Marshall;
James W. C. Pennington, who was born enslaved in 1807 and took his freedom in 1828, and later wrote one of the first history textbooks for Black teachers; and,
Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a schoolteacher, who in 1854, after being forcibly removed from a "whites only" streetcar, successfully challenged racial segregation on New York City public transit and later opened New York City’s first kindergarten for Black children, to name just a few of the gardeners who have come before us.
On this Third Day of Black History, I challenge everyone to learn one new fact about Black History and share it with someone else. By planting seeds of truth today, we affirm our responsibility to nurture knowledge, truth, and justice for generations to come. Let us lead the way—persistent, united, and resolute—as we lay the foundation for a more informed and equitable future.
Bending toward social justice,
Karsonya Wise Whitehead