One hundred years ago this month, a Black scholar and the son of former slaves set out to change the way we celebrate our shared history. Carter Woodson was tired of seeing the role of African Americans overlooked and underappreciated, and in 1926 he declared the very first “Negro History Week” — a predecessor to today’s Black History Month.
For Woodson, this designation wasn’t just about recognizing the past. It was meant to “inspire us to greater achievements” in the future, as he once put it. A century later, during Black History Month, we celebrate the civil rights and labor rights leaders who came before us.
People like A. Philip Randolph, who founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — the nation’s first all-Black labor union — and who organized the 1963 March on Washington that helped stir the conscience of the nation. People like longtime AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy, co-founder and first president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, who was a key figure in helping end apartheid in South Africa.
And people like the AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis, who in 1968 went on strike for safer working conditions and a living wage — one of American history’s most iconic struggles for both racial and economic justice.
Today, we remember their sacrifices. But we also recognize that Black History Month has never been simply a time capsule of the past. It’s a celebration of our struggle — past, present, and future — and a reminder that one voice can lead to a chorus of collective action that refuses to be silenced.
In 2026, we need more voices speaking up for working people.
Black workers everywhere face challenges to their very survival. They’re being squeezed on all sides by the rising cost of everything from groceries to housing to child care and health care. Meanwhile, anti-worker politicians are more focused on cutting taxes for the rich than helping working families stay above water.
But it goes deeper than that.
Throughout our nation’s history, public service jobs have been a ladder to the middle class for African American families. Even while we were turned away from the private sector, Black workers could find good-paying, union jobs in public service.
That’s why for over 150 years, Black communities have seen the United States Postal Service as a source for economic security. It’s why my father could get a union job as a bus driver for the city of Cleveland and provide a stable life for my brother and me. And it’s why to this day, around one in six African American workers have public sector jobs. For those Americans and the families who rely on them, a public service job with a union card has meant a path to a better life.
But in 2026, all that is at risk. For the last twelve months, we’ve seen a targeted campaign by the Trump administration to decimate the public workforce — forcing out hundreds of thousands of federal employees, stripping away collective bargaining rights for those who remain, and making unprecedented budget cuts that will endanger state and local public services that Americans rely on.
By attacking public service workers and stripping away their freedom to have a voice on the job, we’re not just witnessing an attack on public services — we’re seeing a wholesale attack on African Americans’ path to the American Dream.
That’s the current reality for Black workers. But it doesn’t have to be the future.
For the last hundred years, the power of the civil rights and labor movements has come from our collective action — our ability to band together and make the voices of the many speak louder than the commands of the few.
Now is the time to support our public service workers. Now is the time to stand up, speak up, and demand more for working people. Don’t just witness history, be part of it: join a union and organize your workplace. Call your congressmember and tell them to protect our public services. Educate and inform your friends and loved ones about the threats we face. And get off the sidelines and vote in this year’s primary and general elections.
We don’t have to accept a government of, by, and for the wealthy as the new normal. In fact, 100 years of Black History Month shows us that we decide what happens next. It only takes one voice to start a movement, and demand more.