Today is the last day of Black History Month.

For 28 days, stories are shared. Names are spoken. Social feeds fill with quotes, faces, and moments pulled from a past that is too often ignored the rest of the year. Then March arrives, calendars turn, and the weight of that history quietly fades back into the margins.

But Black history does not live on a calendar.

It lives in unfinished business.

More Than Memory—A Reckoning

Black History Month was never meant to be a celebration alone. It was meant to be a correction.

It exists because Black achievement was erased, Black leadership buried, and Black suffering rewritten or ignored. It exists because schools taught sanitized versions of America, stories of progress without the cost, freedom without the fight, unity without the resistance.

Remembering Black Wall Street forces us to confront prosperity that was destroyed, not lost. Remembering Reconstruction reminds us that Black political power once thrived and was intentionally dismantled. Remembering enslaved people who became lawmakers, inventors, educators, and builders disrupts the lie that progress was ever freely given.

Black history tells the truth America struggles to hold.

Why the Last Day Matters

The last day of Black History Month asks a question that is uncomfortable but necessary:

What happens tomorrow?

Will these stories remain part of our conversations?
Will they be taught honestly?
Will they be protected from erasure?
Will remembrance lead to responsibility?

Or will Black history be packed away again, acknowledged, but not applied?

Because history remembered without action becomes symbolism.
And symbolism without accountability changes nothing.

Black History Is Not Separate History

Black history is not an add-on.
Not a sidebar.
Not a special topic.

It is the foundation of American labor.
The backbone of American culture.
The conscience of American democracy.

From enslaved hands that built this nation, to Black soldiers who defended freedoms they were denied, to leaders who imagined justice before the law ever recognized it, Black history has always been central, even when it was silenced.

The discomfort some feel toward Black history is not about the past.
It is about what the past reveals.

Carry It Forward

So if today is the last day of Black History Month, let it not be the last day of remembering.

Carry these stories into classrooms.
Into conversations.
Into policy.
Into faith spaces.
Into how we define patriotism, justice, and truth.

Because Black history does not ask for pity.
It demands honesty.
It calls for courage.
It insists that a nation face itself.

Tomorrow begins a new month.
But the work of remembrance and repair must continue.

Black history does not end today.

It waits to see if we were truly listening.