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So Long Black History Month. It’s Been Real.

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To celebrate the final week of Black History Month, Independent Lens is currently streaming More Than A Month on PBS video. In his documentary, Shukree Tilghman explains that relegating Black History Month to the coldest, shortest month of the year is an insult, and that black history is not separate from American history. In this update from the filmmaker, Tilghman officially resigns from Black History Month and explains his reasons for doing so. 

Director Shukree Tilghman wears a protest sign in Harlem - See more at: http://www.itvs.org/films/more-than-a-month#sthash.6bnE5F6F.dpuf

Director Shukree Tilghman wears a protest sign in Harlem.

To Whom It May Concern:

It is with great sadness that I must submit my resignation and hereby retire from Black History Month, effective Thursday the 28th of February 2013.

It’s been a little over a year since my film More Than A Month, in which I wrestle with the notion of ending Black History Month, first aired on the PBS series Independent Lens, which has been a tremendously gratifying and humbling experience.  I still get goosebumps when a perfect stranger talks about seeing the film and enjoying it – even “Richie from Brooklyn,” the steamfitter who somehow found my phone number and called me to say, in his thick Brooklyn accent, “the black kids should be looking up to people like Oprah Winfrey. Maybe they wouldn’t get into so much trouble.”

I’m not sure Richie understood the film. That’s okay, I suppose. At least More Than A Month made him think (and go to great lengths to find my phone number).

It’s good to feel like you’ve made some kind of difference, however small. I can’t express how grateful I am for all the people, all from a variety of ethnicities and ages, who have approached me after screenings, on Facebook and Twitter, by email, and even on the street, to describe the impact the film has had on their own view of history, race, and the construction of the American story.

But being the face associated with ending Black History Month is a peculiar burden.

Last week, while walking down Lenox Avenue, I thought I saw a woman avert her child’s eyes from my gaze and cross the street.  I could’ve sworn I heard her whisper, “That’s the man that’s trying to end black people, don’t look at him!”

From an article posted on the MTAM Facebook page

From an article posted on the MTAM Facebook page

Then there’s the press. Do you know how weird it is to Google your name and see your face next to big bold headlines, such as “Man Wants to End Black History Month,” “Cancel Black History Month, says New York Filmmaker,” and “February Sucks Ass, Balks Black Man with Beard?”

Ultimately, More Than A Month is not, and has never been, about ending Black History Month. It poses that notion only as a way to examine deeper issues of what it means to have a history month, and the difference between having a month and needing one.

My core mission as a person, artist, and activist is to be of service to others. In the case of More Than A Month, I wanted to empower the history of Africans in America by suggesting that needing a history month is not a position of empowerment and to challenge all of us to be vigilant about the American story and how we tell it.

My greatest hope is that the legacy of the documentary will be in how individuals and groups use the film to generate critical thought, which eventually leads to critical actions, however small or large those actions may be.  I hope people continue to screen it in their communities and watch it in their homes, on their computers and iPads, and even from the bootleg man should he ever get a hold of it.

The poet and teacher, E. Ethelbert Miller, most accurately described More Than A Month as, “not an essay, but a memoir”. Like any memoir, I am the central character, but that character is me in a documentary time-capsule.  The real me lives in the world that continues to turn on its axis, generating new questions to mine and explore, like my next “memoir,” a new, yet untitled film about black women and marriage in which I explore the much debated statistic that black women in the US are least likely to be married.  I’m looking forward to the potential headlines (perhaps “Black Man, Tired of February, Now Seeks End to Marriage”).

More Than A Month and Black History Month are inextricably linked. Both will go on.  They’re just going to have to go on without me.

So, Black History Month, my frenemy, it’s been real.  But, alas, our March has come.

Sincerely,

Shukree Tilghman
Director, More Than A Month


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