I think about a woman who crossed oceans when the world tried to cage her. Who built power with intellect, style, and nerve when dignity was rationed. Who refused to shrink herself to be tolerated and instead expanded the room by existing fully.

Josephine Baker understood something early: survival isn’t passive. It’s imaginative. It’s strategic. It’s chosen.

I think about her—not as just an icon, but as a strategist. She was outspoken when silence was safer. A writer who understood narrative as power. An activist who used her visibility deliberately, not decoratively. She refused to be confined by the roles offered to her and instead authored her own life across borders, languages, and systems that tried to deny her dignity.

She didn’t wait for permission to belong. She left, built leverage elsewhere, and came back on her own terms. She funded her work, supported others, spoke plainly, and understood that survival required imagination, risk, and resolve.

That lineage matters—because what Black women are doing now isn’t new. It’s inherited skill. Adaptation. Creation under pressure. The ability to read a hostile environment and still build something livable inside it.

And that same historical fluency cuts both ways. The tools we’ve inherited didn’t emerge in a vacuum—they were shaped in response to forces that have never fully disappeared. Which means when something familiar shows up, we recognize it immediately.

Last night, the President of the United States shared a video mocking the Obamas by dressing them in monkey suits. That wasn’t accidental. That wasn’t humor. That was an old language, spoken fluently, meant to remind Black Americans exactly where some people believe we belong.

So let me be clear. If people feel comfortable being openly anti-Black in 2026, then I have no hesitation being openly, loudly, and proudly Pro-Black.

Black history IS American history. Black culture IS American culture. Black labor, Black intellect, Black creativity, Black resilience built this country into the economic and cultural powerhouse it likes to take credit for. From agriculture to music, from architecture to innovation, from language to labor movements, this nation has eaten well off Black genius and ingenuity while pretending it didn’t come from us.

Shared history isn’t sentimental. It’s factual. And it includes who paid the cost when this country decided to grow. And any version of history that excludes Black Americans isn’t incomplete by accident—it’s distorted by design. You cannot tell the truth of this country while erasing the people whose labor, intellect, and imagination helped build it. What we inherit together carries responsibility, not denial.

This country was built on land taken from Indigenous peoples—through broken treaties, forced removal, and violence that has never been fully reconciled. That truth sits alongside every other truth we tell about America. Enslaved Africans, Indigenous nations, immigrants, laborers, and marginalized communities did not build this country in isolation from one another; our histories are intertwined by design, by resistance, and by survival. To acknowledge Black history honestly also requires acknowledging the land it was built on, the agreements that were ignored, and the people whose sovereignty was dismissed so a nation could rise. Truth doesn’t divide us. It gives the full picture.

If you’ve ever loved jazz, hip-hop, rock, blues, fashion, food, comedy, language, movement, style, strategy, or soul—if Black culture has ever given you joy, clarity, comfort, or truth—then understand this: enjoying the culture while ignoring the people is no longer neutral. It’s a choice.

Supporting Black-owned businesses isn’t charity. It’s alignment. It’s acknowledgment. It’s recognizing that culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  It exists because people survived long enough to create it.

This isn’t about a month. It never was. It’s about where you put your money, your voice, and your values year round.

They go low, yes.
But we don’t follow them there.

We walk forward. We build anyway. And if they insist on standing in the way, we’ll use their smallness as the bridge to something better.

Pro-Black and Black Lives Matter are not statements of exclusion. They are responses to a long record of erasure, imbalance, and selective concern.

Calling that out isn’t radical—it’s responsible.

Clarity doesn’t threaten healthy unity. It makes it possible.

With Care.

Tasha Monroe

Founder, Simply Edyn & Co.

 

Explore our Black History Month page.