Actress Stacey Dash recently incited headlines by saying that Black History Month was no longer necessary. In the storm of controversy I can offer that, indeed the homogenized “I Have a Dream” corporate version of black history leaves many underwhelmed including some black millennials. But thanks to Carter G. Woodson, the founder of Black History Month and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (The Association), you can be sure that it will take more than a Hollywood ingénue known for the movie “Clueless” to uproot a 100 year institution that is not going anywhere.

The Association (ASALH) celebrated its centennial year in 2015 as keeper of a rich history that flies against the face of Michelle Alexander’s New Jim Crow America, an America that has criminalized an entire race. But we can look to the Association to tell stories that honor and secure the past while planning for the future. On that note, ASALH’s recently elected president, Dr. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham says, “When people write years from now about this moment, historians are not just going to be talking about criminality I assure you.”

Dr. Higginbotham brings a legacy that is golden to an organization that is already a historical treasure. Her father, Albert Neal Dow Brooks, was instrumental in advancing the work of Carter G. Woodson and served as Secretary-Treasurer and Editor of the Negro History Bulletin. As Higginbotham stands on the shoulders of these great men, she blazes her own path in black history scholarship and studies rivaled by few. Currently she is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and African and African American Studies and chair of the Department of African American Studies at Harvard University. In 2015 President Barack Obama presented her with the 2014 National Humanities Award and she was cited “for illuminating the African-American journey.” The citation went on to say, “In her writings and edited volumes, Dr. Higginbotham has traced the course of African-American history, and deepened our understanding of the American story.”

We live in a culture of sound-bytes verses serious dialogue. Higginbotham, a scholar who has lived a black cultural life that historians can only write about, responds to the black history debate with sobering remarks. She speaks of a whole movement that brought into being Martin Luther King Day, a day which clearly did not imply that the contemplation of his vast contributions could be confined to a single day. That would be absurd. The same is true for Black History Month, she said, started by Carter G. Woodson as a week to observe a history that consumed his entire life. She went on to say that the public proclamation by every president every year since Gerald Ford saying that African Americans are prominent and pivotal contributors to the American saga, speaks volumes in and of itself. She quoted Ronald Reagan’s proclamation saying, “I invite the Governors of the several States, and our schools, colleges, universities, and libraries, the stewards of our national consciousness, and all Americans to observe this month with appropriate activities to heighten awareness of black history and to stimulate continuing inquiry into this rich vein of the American experience.”

That is a mouthful for a sound-byte, but clearly does not lend itself to trivialization. Dr. Higginbotham grew up by her father’s side on Saturdays at Carter G. Woodson’s home in Washington, DC, absorbing history in the making while other girls were playing hopscotch. She credits her father for her focus on history, sharing rich family stories about emancipation, reconstruction and Jim Crow, that she would later read about in books. Her mother, Alma Elaine Campbell, a high school history teacher who later served as the supervisor for history in the Washington, D.C. public school system, inspired her to teach history.

Higginbotham could experience what it felt like to make history in her own right when she received the National Humanities Award from President Obama. She said that at that moment all she could think of was her father and Carter G. Woodson. “What would they be saying today if they could see this black president giving a black woman an award for black history,” and she had a big laugh. Historic, indeed.

It is no small feat that the head of this prestigious organization is a black woman. Higginbotham acknowledges that she stands on the shoulders of so many women who have tread a historical landscape that was decidedly male territory. Her favorite historical shero is Harriet Tubman because she risked her freedom to save someone else’s. “You can’t let yourself get so comfortable that you stop fighting,.” she said.  According to her, Nannie Helen Burroughs brought dignity to domestic workers; Ida B. Wells stood up against lynching when few would; and Fannie Lou Hamer risked her livelihood for voting rights. Other influences are children’s advocate, Marian Wright Edelman and her high school teacher Helen Blackburn. Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter won the historian’s approbation when she heard her speak at Harvard.

Finally, people who are trying to relegate Black History Month to the dust heap need to be aware of Dr. Evelyn Higginbotham and her vision for ASALH. Recognizing that too many people find the organization obscure, although it is as old as the NAACP, she intends to make it a household name. There are many vibrant branches all over the world that not only are inclusive of historians and scholars, but people of humble means, different races and ethnicities. She also means to help young people make sense of Ferguson senselessness and to inspire the growing civil rights movement of today as the organization has done in the past.

Journalist and suffragette Ida B. Wells said, “History is a weapon.” (She also kept a Winchester rifle by her side.) If history is a weapon then, in the skirmish over the relevance of Black History Month, we can take comfort that Dr. Evelyn Higginbotham as President of ASALH, is a powerful addition to a mighty historic arsenal.

Auset Marian Lewis’s journalism has been published in over 50 media outlets from coast to coast and abroad. She was the first female African American columnist for the Wilmington News Journal. Her poetry and fiction have won awards and she has been invited to speak in venues on radio and TV from Yale University to homeless shelters in Baltimore, Maryland.

Lewis has written two books: A Settling of Crows and From My Lips to God’s Ear: The Joanne Collins Story.

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