Whitney + ambition + Dixie Cups + freedom

+ a thought about Black History Month

It’s Black History Month, and like my school teachers did at Carthay Center Elementary, Shine Bright HQ is decorating our bulletin board with portraits of Black people in construction paper frames. We’re listing accomplishments. We’re celebrating the everyday labor, and love in Black lives. We, as always, are reminding readers of what is usually and quite strategically forgotten by the larger culture. As Chuck D raps in Public Enemy’s 1990 “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” History shouldn’t be a mystery / Our story’s real history not / His story.

I love history, and always have. I’m nosy. I like to report. I like context. I like histories of cultural scenes, labor union histories, biographies of musicians and mayors. Memoirs of painters and poets. I jump into histories of words, histories of recipes, histories of slave ships. My most recent book is called, after all, Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. I’m a journalist, and we’re known for writing the “first rough…