Black History Month Day 14: Valentine’s Day
Today the stores fill with roses that never grew in February and chocolate that never needed a season. We will write little notes that say “love you” because the calendar nudges us to remember tenderness.
And at the same time, we sit in the middle of Black History Month — the most honest love story America has ever tried to avoid reading.
I have lived long enough to notice a pattern.
We like love when it is soft.
We resist it when it demands courage.
Valentine’s Day celebrates affection.
Black history celebrates devotion.
Not the greeting-card kind. The enduring kind.
The kind where people loved a country that did not love them back and still insisted it live up to its own promises.
That is not sentiment.
That is commitment.
Frederick Douglass loved the Constitution enough to argue with it.
Harriet Tubman loved strangers enough to risk death repeatedly.
Ida B. Wells loved truth enough to publish it when it could get her killed.
Martin Luther King Jr. loved justice enough to keep walking into threats.
And thousands whose names we do not know loved their children enough to believe they deserved a future they might never see.
We have been taught to think of love as comfort.
History teaches love is labor.
The Civil Rights Movement was not powered by outrage alone. Outrage burns hot and fast. What sustained it was disciplined, stubborn love — people who believed human dignity mattered even when the law disagreed.
That kind of love is inconvenient.
It writes letters when silence would be easier.
It marches when staying home would be safer.
It tells truth when politeness would be rewarded.
It refuses to hate even while refusing to accept harm.
That is the radical part.
Black History Month is not a catalogue of suffering. It is a record of people practicing love at a scale large enough to bend systems.
Not romantic love.
Civic love.
Love for neighbors not yet met.
Love for future grandchildren.
Love for the possibility that a nation can grow up.
Every expansion of freedom in this country came from people who loved beyond what was reasonable.
And every February we are invited to decide whether we want love to remain decorative… or operational.
Roses wilt in days.
Justice survives generations.
So maybe this Valentine’s Day we widen the meaning a little.
Tell someone you cherish them.
Call your family.
Eat the chocolate.
And also remember: the most powerful love in American history was not whispered across a dinner table — it was carried across bridges, courtrooms, buses, and classrooms.
It looked like persistence.
It looked like patience.
It looked like people who believed caring for others was not weakness but responsibility.
That is the love Black history hands to us.
Not nostalgia.
Instruction.
Love your partner, yes.
But also love your neighbor enough to care what happens to them in a voting line.
Love children enough to want honest textbooks.
Love truth enough to learn the parts that make us uncomfortable.
Because love that asks nothing changes nothing.
And love that risks something changes everything.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
And thank you to the generations who showed us what love looks like when it grows a backbone.
Julie Bolejack, MBA
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