Black History Month begins, but more could be done: expert

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Monday marks the start of Black History Month, an event that is all the more timely given the Black Lives Matter movement and the struggles of racialized communities around the world. It was first observed in Canada 25 years ago. However, one expert says celebrating Black history, or anyone else’s history for that matter, should not be left to just four weeks of the year.

“You know, it’s part of our human history,” explains Dr. Adam Rudder, co-chair of the Hogan’s Alley Society in Vancouver. “The contributions and experiences of Black people as well as Chinese people and South Asian people and Indigenous people…we should be acknowledging all of these histories, all of the time.”

February is #BlackHistoryMonth – take part and celebrate! BC Black History Awareness Society is hosting a great lineup of virtual events starting this Sunday. For more information and to register, visit their website: https://t.co/ckPd67XqiL pic.twitter.com/JM6TNeElRZ

— VancouverHeritageFdn (@VanHeritage) February 1, 2021

Rudder is a lecturer and a historian who is currently working on a book about Hogan’s Alley, Vancouver’s historic Black enclave, which was cleared out with the building of the Georgia Viaduct in the early 1970s.

“It’s actually based on my Master’s thesis and what I’m hoping to do is a little bit more archival research interviews and really contribute to the process of putting the Hogan’s Alley Black community onto the map in a way that is respectful, not only to the history of Black people, but the history of all folks that were in the Strathcona area and contributed to the vibrancy and the growth of Hogan’s Alley.”

He says Black History Month is a good first step in raising awareness, but more must be done to support the research that goes into projects like his.

“I think that what we don’t sometimes realize is how much work it is to do this research in the archives and to do these interviews and to get out there and try and dig and figure out and to discover these sort of histories. This is work and it needs to be paid,” he explains.

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Rudder also admits he didn’t even know how much of a role the Black community played in the development of B.C. until he was out of high school.

“Even though I had grown up here in British Columbia and went through the school system here, there’s never been any mention of Black history in British Columbia. It’s shocking.”

“One of the things that young people are struggling with here in our community is the sort of sense of not having a sense of belonging at all, and dismissed that we don’t have a sort of history here that roots us here.”

Rudder recently wrote the forward to the new edition of Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia, a book he first discovered as a History undergrad at Simon Fraser University. Journalist and historian Crawford Kilian wrote it more than 40 years ago and it remains a foundational work on the subject decades later.

“It’s pretty incredible what he did, you know, with his spare time, putting this document together, just because he wanted that story to be out. And I think we owe him thanks for that, but at the same time, I don’t think that we can really rely on that sort of generosity.”

Rudder says Go Do Some Great Thing would be a fine teaching tool for young adults, but admits including more Black history in our public schools is no easy task.

“You can’t just introduce a curriculum into an otherwise very European-focused education system and hope for these incredible outcomes. I think it’s a great first step and that’s definitely where we’re starting, but it’s a real challenge to get people interested enough.”

He would like to see more attention paid to not only the cultural contributions made by the Black community, but to the field of STEM (short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as well.