These are the winners of this year’s Black History Month Messay (Me/Essay) Contest, which is open annually to all creatives, from writers and essayists to lyricists and musicians, and from podcasters, poets and spoken word artists to painters, designers and photographers.
First Place Winner – Keyon Alexander
Second Place Winner – Savannah West
Third Place Winner – Kathleen Lawrence
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History Withheld Is Humanity Denied
By Keyon Alexander
“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” That’s Carter G. Woodson and this wasn’t poetic hyperbole, Woodson was serious — and rightfully so.
Because if we really pay attention to what’s happening today in classrooms across the country, in state legislatures across the country, in public discourse around what history gets taught and what history gets erased … one hundred years later, his words still sting.
It’s 2026 and we are celebrating the centennial of Black History Month, but right now, there are bills being pushed in states to limit how Black history is taught in our classrooms. Florida passed the Stop WOKE Act which, among other things, sought to prohibit instruction that suggests “systemic racism” is embedded in American and Florida history, and that the “legacy of such racism” impacts certain racial groups today.
That didn’t happen a century ago, that happened four years ago. Woodson feared this day and, in fact, Woodson established Negro History Week because of this fear alone.
I think about how students across the country are advocating against DEI initiatives being eliminated at their universities and in their workplaces. Because when those programs go, so does the dedicated space for centering stories, experiences, and history that are not — for however many reasons — included in the mainstream. It creates this cycle: if there is less diversity in the room, future generations do not learn about their country’s full history and therefore cannot see themselves in their country’s story. Woodson saw this happening a hundred years ago. That’s why he was so adamant.
Black history matters this month and every other month. History, who gets to learn it and who decides what it is, is power. And who has power gets to decide who matters. Woodson understood that Black Americans had every right to claim ownership over this country but their history told a different story and we need to teach the whole story not because we owe black people, but because black kids, white kids, and brown kids deserve to learn what America really is. Not an altered narrative that leaves out the parts that make us uncomfortable.
It’s 2026 and we can check on the progress Woodson wanted us to be making and celebrate, yes, but also take time to reflect on how far we have to go. We should be asking: Have we integrated Black history into American history? The truth is: no we haven’t, but we can and we should. Woodson didn’t just want Black History Month, he wanted integration, and we’re still in the process of that.
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What I Was Not Taught: Rethinking American Identity Through the Absence of Black History
By Savannah West
I grew up in Connecticut in a town with very little ethnic or cultural diversity. The cultures that were visible were the ones we celebrated. At school rallies there were Irish step performances. We learned about Jewish history and welcomed guest speakers from the local Jewish community. These traditions were meaningful, but they reflected who was present, not who was missing.
When it came to Black history, the story was narrow and predictable. We learned about Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman. They were presented as monoliths, moral heroes frozen in time. Slavery was described as Africans being taken and enslaved, but we were not taught the intellectual architecture that justified it, including race theory and social Darwinism. I understood that Europeans believed people from other countries were inferior, but I thought the barrier was nationality or language, not a constructed racial hierarchy designed to maintain power.
Race itself was not meaningfully introduced to me until sixth grade, during a unit on the Holocaust. Even then, it was framed primarily as a European tragedy. I knew there were people who looked different from me. There were perhaps three Asian students in my school and a handful of Hispanic or Latine students. My first non-Western cultural experience was attending a Mexican American classmate’s birthday party, where I encountered traditional food and a piñata. I had a friend whose parents were first-generation Russian immigrants who commuted to New Jersey for Eastern Orthodox church services. I understood cultural difference, but I did not understand race as a social system.
This absence shaped my understanding of American identity. America, as it was presented to me, was fundamentally fair. Racism was something that happened in the past. I watched films and documentaries like “The Color of Friendship” that taught about segregation, apartheid, and slavery, but the framing emphasized progress. The message was that we had come a long way. The question of how far we still needed to go was rarely asked.
It was not until I moved to Oregon and experienced greater diversity in schools and neighborhoods that my perspective shifted. For the first time, I witnessed how race operates socially in everyday life. I began to recognize microaggressions, unconscious bias, and the additional cognitive and emotional labor that people of color carry alongside ordinary life responsibilities. What had once felt abstract or historical became present and structural.
In hindsight, the moment that should have changed my perspective came earlier. It should have been when I realized how little Black history I was taught. The repetition of the same four names across years of schooling should have prompted questions. Why were Black Americans primarily discussed in the context of enslavement or civil rights protest? Why were their contributions to science, literature, governance, and everyday civic life largely absent? The narrowness itself was a form of erasure.
My upbringing was sheltered. It was comfortable. It allowed me to believe that fairness was the default and that racism was a resolved chapter, or at worst something isolated to “backwaters” and “Southern racists.” That framing was itself classist and judgmental. Racism was assigned to the old, the uneducated, or the morally deficient. It was portrayed as a regional flaw or a personal failing, not as a structural social issue that implicated all of us. That comfort came at the cost of nuance. It deprived me of a deeper understanding of how American identity has been shaped not only by ideals of liberty and equality, but also by systems of exclusion and racial hierarchy.
The existence of Black History Month is revealing. In a society that had fully integrated Black history into its understanding of national identity, such a month would feel redundant. It would sound as unnecessary as a White History Month. Instead, the month functions as a reminder because Black histories and contributions are routinely minimized, sidelined, or forgotten in dominant narratives. People of color live with this awareness daily. Those of us who are privileged are prompted to remember once a year.
Learning more expansive and honest Black history has complicated my understanding of America. It has shifted the narrative from one of uncomplicated progress to one of ongoing struggle and unfinished work. American identity, I now understand, is not simply defined by its founding principles. It is defined by who has been allowed to fully participate in them, and who has had to fight to make them real.
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To Teach
To teach not of the old and the new but of the sum of the two
Young minds are a beautiful thing, a beautiful fragile thing
To teach not just of the polished but of the true
A mind that is pure and hungry and kind awaiting the final bell ring
To teach of strength in unity instead of power from greed and it’s a breakthrough
–Kathleen Lawrence
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Young Minds
Young minds that want to be shaped to save not to ruin
Out of sight grows a tree for the future, glowing bright
Young minds that opened the window before the dove flew in
The tree’s roots are shadowed in violence and yet it still knows right
Young minds are a beautiful fragile thing
To teach young minds of Black history can not be denied
–Kathleen Lawrence
