By Rhonda Sewell
President/Founder, Rhonda Has Spoken, LLC
Guest Contributor
This year marks the centennial, 100 years, of what began as a radical act of preservation and pride.
In 1926, historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) created Negro History Week so that the contributions of Black Americans would be studied, honored, and remembered in a nation that routinely ignored or erased them. Fifty years later, in 1976, President Gerald Ford formally recognized Black History Month during the nation’s Bicentennial, urging Americans to celebrate Black history as American history. What began as a week became a month, and what began as resistance became a global observance through successive presidential proclamations.
One hundred years is no small feat.
This centennial moment invites reflection, yes, but it also demands celebration. Black history is often framed solely through struggle, resilience and survival. Those truths matter deeply, but they are not the entirety of who we are. We are creators, innovators, visionaries, artists, scholars, leaders, builders and dreamers. We have shaped this nation and the world through invention, science, medicine, politics, sports, fashion, music, literature, activism, business and culture in ways that are immeasurable and undeniable.
Despite being handed a raw deal in this country, we overcame. And we continue to overcome.
But this 100-year milestone also challenges us to ask harder questions. What stories are still untold? Whose brilliance has been overlooked, minimized or erased? How do we ensure that the next century of Black history is documented not only in moments of resistance, but also in moments of joy, rest, imagination, excellence and abundance?
Black history is not static. It is living, breathing and unfolding right now, in classrooms and courtrooms, boardrooms and basements, studios and sanctuaries, neighborhoods and movements. It shows up in how we love, how we organize, how we lead, how we create beauty out of scarcity and how we imagine futures freer than the past we inherited.
This centennial is not about nostalgia alone. It is about responsibility. Responsibility to protect truth in a time of distortion. Responsibility to pass knowledge down when systems fail to do so. Responsibility to make room for complexity, humanity, and excellence, because Black history is not a footnote, an elective, or a single month. It is foundational.
For me, this moment is also deeply personal.
I am profoundly grateful to my parents and my uncle, who instilled in me a love of heritage, history, and culture. Because of them, I honor the full story of my people, our pain and our power, our endurance and our brilliance.
On my maternal side, I am related to Willa Beatrice Brown (1906-1992), a woman whose life reads like a blueprint for courage and possibility. She is credited as the first Black woman in the United States to earn a pilot’s license, at a time when both race and gender were used as barriers to the sky itself. Brown went on to become the first Black officer in the Civil Air Patrol and the first Black woman to run for Congress, proving that the limits placed on Black women were never about ability, only access.
On my paternal side, I am related to Ethel Lois Payne (1911-1991), often referred to as the First Lady of the Black Press. Payne was a trailblazing journalist who covered Black soldiers during wartime, challenged power directly, and refused silence. She famously confronted President Dwight D. Eisenhower during a White House press briefing in 1954 on the federal government’s failure to ban segregation in interstate railway, and his irritated response made headlines.
She later became the first woman to host a television show on a major network, CBS, with her program Spectrum. Today, her legacy is immortalized on a United States postage stamp.
This is the bloodline I come from.
This is the confidence I carry. These are the matriarchs whose shoulders I stand on.
Not just for the 28 days of February, but for all 365 days of the year.
I am unapologetic about my heritage and my culture. I am proud of the resilience of my people, my nation, my cultural nation. One hundred years is a milestone worth honoring, but I walk with the assurance that the people I surround myself with, people who look like me, are making history right now.
We are the first many times over in our own lives, often without realizing it. History is not only behind us. It is happening in real time.
Here in Toledo, during my more than 30 years living and working in this city, I have been the first, first in board leadership, first to hold leadership roles and first in multiple professional spaces. I know I am not alone in that experience. Black history is not something I observe from a distance.
Black history is me.
This centennial of Black History Month is a reminder that Black people are a gift to America, a treasure to this nation, and a profound contribution to the world. Whatever your ethnicity, teach your children how deeply Black culture and Black excellence are woven into the fabric of our shared history.
As we mark 100 years of intentional remembrance, may we recommit to telling the full story, boldly, honestly and without apology. May we honor our elders while amplifying the next generation. And may we insist that Black history is American history, and world history, not just in word, but in practice.
Here’s to another 100 years of progress, and to recognizing that history is not only something we study.
It is something we are still making.