Black History Month: Day 7 The Work Is Ongoing

Some days, history doesn’t knock.

It barges in, muddy boots and all, and sits at your kitchen table like it owns the place.

I’ve lived long enough to know the feeling.

The quiet dread that tells you something has shifted again, not suddenly, but unmistakably.

Black History Month is often presented as a retrospective.

A completed chapter.

A museum wing we can stroll through, nod solemnly, and then exit back into the present.

But Black history is not over.

And the work it demands of us is not done.

That truth is not theoretical.

It shows up in policy, in language, and in the casual cruelty of people with power who understand exactly what they are doing.

When a Presudent posts racist imagery and rhetoric aimed at former President Barack and former First Lady, Michelle Obama, it is not a mistake.

It is not satire.

It is not a lapse in judgment.

It is a signal.

I’ve watched this pattern repeat for decades.

You provoke.

You dehumanize.

You bait outrage.

And then you point to the reaction as justification for force.

This is not new.

It is one of the oldest tricks in the American playbook.

From Reconstruction through Jim Crow, from “law and order” campaigns to modern dog whistles dressed up as memes, the tactic remains the same.

Define Black people as dangerous, unruly, or less than human.

Then claim that repression is simply self-defense.

What struck me most about that post was not its ugliness, though it was ugly.

It was its precision.

Barack and Michelle Obama represent something deeply destabilizing to white supremacy.

Not perfection, but dignity.

Not submission, but composure.

Not erasure, but presence.

They are living proof that the story many Americans were taught about who belongs and who leads was always a lie.

And so the response is not debate.

It is degradation.

This is why Black History Day 7 matters.

Because the work is not simply remembering what happened.

It is recognizing what is happening.

I am 73 years old.

I have seen progress.

And I have seen backlash sharpen its knives every time that progress dares to breathe.

I watched as the Civil Rights Movement was reframed from a moral reckoning into a “disruption.”

I watched as school integration became “forced.”

I watched as the first Black president was met with conspiracies, obstruction, and a rage so disproportionate it could not possibly be explained by policy disagreements.

That rage did not disappear when he left office.

It metastasized.

The cruelty we are seeing now is not chaos.

It is strategy.

Racist provocation serves a purpose.

It exhausts people.

It divides attention.

It pulls us into endless cycles of reaction instead of sustained resistance.

And it asks us an unspoken question.

Will you lose your humanity while fighting this?

That question matters.

Black history teaches us that survival has always required more than endurance.

It has required moral discipline.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott did not succeed because people were endlessly outraged.

It succeeded because people were organized, patient, and clear about what they were up against.

The Civil Rights Movement was not powered by viral anger.

It was powered by resolve.

The danger now is not only what is being said from the highest platforms.

It is what those messages attempt to do to the rest of us.

They want us reactive.

They want us frightened.

They want us either numb or explosive.

What they fear most is steadiness.

Steady people cannot be easily manipulated.

Steady people remember history.

Steady people understand that cruelty is often loud because it is brittle.

As a mindful activist, I am not interested in performing outrage for clicks or clout.

I am interested in truth that holds.

Truth says that racist rhetoric from powerful figures puts real people in danger.

Truth says that dehumanization is never just speech.

Truth says that when leaders traffic in hate, they are not testing boundaries.

They are eroding them.

Black History Month asks something specific of those of us who are not Black.

It asks us to stop treating racism as an abstraction.

And to stop waiting for a perfect response before we act.

You do not need to know the next ten steps.

You need to know the next right one.

Refuse to normalize cruelty.

Refuse to amplify lies, even in anger.

Refuse to forget what history has already taught us about where this road leads.

And then, quietly and persistently, do the work.

Read.

Listen.

Support Black journalists, scholars, and organizers who are telling the truth without theatrics.

Talk to the people in your life who still want to believe this is all just noise.

Remind them that noise becomes policy when no one pushes back.

The work is ongoing because the stakes are ongoing.

And because democracy is not self-sustaining.

I do not write these letters to alarm you.

I write them to anchor you.

We have been here before.

And we know what is required.

Not hysteria.

Not silence.

But courage with a pulse.

Black history is not asking us to be perfect.

It is asking us to be present.

Mindful activism asks us to stay awake without becoming hardened, to tell the truth without losing our humanity, and to remember that how we show up matters just as much as what we oppose. Thank you for being here and for walking this path with me.

Julie Bolejack, MBA

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