It's the Brian Lera Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

Now we'll launch our contribution to Black for, I'm sorry, let me start that again.

Now we'll launch our contribution to Black

History Month for this year. It'll be a three-part series on the show about the history of

acknowledging black history, both within the community and by a wider audience. The historical

hook is that this is the centennial year of the observance that became Black History Month.

There is also the news hook that the Trump administration is on a campaign to re-marginalize it,

thinking that it's been centered too much.

One recent example, just last month, they removed Martin Luther King's birthday and Juneteenth as free admission days at

national parks. Did you hear about that one? And added Trump's own birthday, flag day, June 14th.

But we'll get to that later in the month, as we'll do this series in three parts. Today, the first

50 years in the centennial timeline, that'll be 1926 to 1976,

then on Wednesday, 1976 to the present, and finally a specific focus on the current ways

that the acknowledgement of black history is under attack by the government and the struggle

over that.

Joining me now to take us back to 1926 and even a little before is Dr. Carsonia-Wise Whitehead, president of Asala, the Association for the Study of African American Life and

History.

Asala is the organization founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the father of black history, as he's often called, back in 1915.

Woodson is also considered the father of black history month.

Dr. Whitehead is also a professor of communications and African and African American Studies at Loyola, University, Maryland, and the founding executive director of the Carson Institute

for Race, Peace, and Social Justice. And she even did a history of black history presentation

...