February is a Necessary Starting Point

Stories about the Black experience as told by an array of storytellers deserve year-round inclusion in the nation’s historical narrative. Public media can lead.

Black History Month 2025 is nearly over. I hope you’ve enjoyed a wide array of media and cultural events that center the Black experience. I advocate celebrating all year long. There is certainly no shortage of Black stories deserving of inclusion in the overarching American narrative. Nonetheless, heritage months like February remain the only time when most Americans can rely on discovering lesser-known chapters in our shared national history. The recent cherry-picking and brazen attempts to erase Black history make it impossible for me to believe that eliminating Black History Month would somehow make it more likely that America’s children will learn our stories. Nearly five decades in, it’s clear that heritage months like February are a necessary starting point. Necessary because the resistance to embracing the full breadth of stories that explain how our nation came to be is virulent and disturbingly indefatigable. 

Leaning Into the Wind

This week, my colleague Tonya Thomas, my fellow NMCA leaders and I are joining our public media partners in Washington, D.C., for the annual APTS Public Media Summit. While here, we’re updating members of Congress on all the ways that our work with independent media makers and public media outlets contributes to the economic, cultural and social wellbeing of our nation.  

After four years of everyone speaking the words of diversity, equity, and inclusion out loud, there is an eerie silence. But now is not the time for silence. Instead, we must lean into the wind and speak plainly about how these words manifests in our work: 

• Providing closed captioning and audio-described content so those who are deaf, blind, and hearing and visually impaired can learn the stories alongside everyone else; 
• Showing documentaries about Brenda Lee and Hazel Scott, so Americans in rural and urban areas are introduced to these incredible artists’ contributions; 
• Ensuring Ready-To-Learn content reaches all of America’s preschoolers. 

Public media offers vital ways to bond Americans to one another through stories — fortifying our collective spirit of E Pluribus Unum.  

Talking about Dreams

Langston Hughes once dreamed of a world more embracing and appreciative of the contributions of Black folk. Well I, too, dream a world. In my dreams, public media is generously championed and funded by a Congress that recognizes the value of commercial- free content that’s representative of and fully accessible to all Americans. It’s a world where stories from Harlem and the borderlands of Texas are celebrated as enthusiastically as those from Appalachia and the UK. It’s a world where stories about tech entrepreneurship in Black and Brown communities are funded as readily as stories about Silicon Valley’s tech bros. And it’s a world where leaders who talk about “Americans” are referring to all citizens, not just those who are cis-gender, White, wealthy, abled, and Christian.

I am emboldened by the stories we tell in February and by the knowledge that my dreams are shared by all of you. Together, let’s continue uplifting these stories and working to make our nation’s past and present dreams a reality — in February and beyond.