Our final week of reflections has arrived. I hope you enjoy seven more wonderful commemorations. I am curious to know which dates stood out to you the most. Please comment if you feel inclined. As always, I am only summarizing the issues, so click the links to get the full run down with pics and vids and sources and more.
February 22nd 2026: Maggie Lena Walker
– Maggie Lena Walker grew up in Richmond, Virginia.
– Her mother, Elizabeth Draper Mitchell, was a formerly enslaved woman who worked as a laundress after gaining her freedom. Young Walker grew up watching her mother and other Black laundresses gather to talk through problems facing their community.
– As a teenager, Walker joined the First African Baptist Church and became a member of Good Idea Council #16 of the Independent Order of the Sons and Daughters of St. Luke, a fraternal organization focused on mutual support, moral values, and helping members through hardship.
– In 1885, she helped launch a Juvenile Division within the Order to organize the youth.
– In 1902, she founded The St. Luke Herald, a weekly newspaper that served the Order. Within a few years, it had 4,000 subscribers and published popular editorials, many of which spotlighted stories of Black women in Richmond and beyond.
– Between 1904 and 1906, the paper became a platform for civil rights advocacy and helped garner support for a boycott of Richmond’s segregated streetcar system.
– November 1903, she chartered the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, becoming the first African American woman in the United States to found, charter, and serve as president of a bank.
– By 1920, it had financed more than 600 home loans to residents in Jackson Ward, the historically Black neighborhood just north of downtown Richmond.
– This gave her the foundation to purchase a building on behalf of the Order to house both the bank and a new department store, the St. Luke Emporium. The store was staffed by Black employees and served the Black community at a time when many businesses in Richmond refused to. She also bought her own home a few blocks away, where she resided with her family. The house became a gathering place, hosting guests like Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, and Mary McLeod Bethune.
– When the stock market crashed in 1929, she guided St. Luke Penny Savings Bank through a merger with two other Black-owned Richmond banks, forming Consolidated Bank and Trust. She served as Chair of the Board until her death on December 15, 1934, at age 70.
– After Walker’s death, her daughter-in-law, Hattie, remained in the Leigh Street house until 1971. In 1978, Walker’s granddaughter deeded the property to the National Park Service with the hope it would become a historic site and accessible to the public. The property became the first national park in the country dedicated to an African American woman.
– Through preserving her legacy, so many more people can learn what’s possible when we listen to Black women, elevate their stories, and give them the resources they deserve.
Reflections
1. Walker built institutions like a newspaper, a bank, and a department store to strengthen her community. What institutions or resources exist in your community today that were built by and for people who looked like you? How about for those that don’t share your same identity?
For me, I have had most everything built by people and for people who are white. As a woman, I know of the Women’s Bean Project. Some institutions and resources that exist for people and by people who don’t share my same identity include the Denver Urban League and the Latin American Educational Foundation.
2. Walker focused on financial sustainability for herself and her community. How is financial sustainability as a form of social justice?
Being able to provide for and maintain ownership of yourself and your organizations is important and hard to come by. In a world built for white men, it is important to have financial sustainability to fall back on when the going gets tough. Being a minority and being financially secure is truly a form of social justice.
3. The Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site exists because her family and community fought to preserve her story. Whose story in your family or community deserves to be better known? What would it take to make sure it isn’t forgotten?
I’m not too sure about my community to be honest. In my family lately I have just been wanting to know more about our history. I think it would be special to almost write it down as a collection of short stories. Time to interview my family!
February 23rd 2026: Bruce’s Beach
– In February 1912, Willa and Charles Bruce paid $1,225 for a small stretch of beachfront property in Manhattan Beach, California. She and her husband built a lodge, a café, and a dance hall right on the sand, creating one of the only beach resorts in Southern California where Black families could actually relax without being turned away.
– During this time, Black Americans were legally barred from using public beaches and swimming pools designated for white people.
– The resort’s success made white neighbors uncomfortable. They complained. They pressured city officials. They enlisted the Ku Klux Klan to scare away patrons.
– In 1924, the Manhattan Beach City Council voted to use eminent domain to seize the Bruce property and surrounding land, claiming it was needed for a public park. The city council also voted to block any new beach resorts from opening to make sure the Bruces couldn’t simply start over somewhere else. The resort was demolished by 1927.
– Willa Bruce fought back. She and her husband filed a lawsuit seeking $120,000 in damages. In 1929, after years of legal back-and-forth, they settled for $14,500 — a fraction of what they asked for, and far less than what they’d lost.
– For most of the 20th century, the story of the Bruce family barely registered in public conversation. That started to change in 2006, when Manhattan Beach elected its first and only Black mayor, Mitch Ward. Under his leadership, the city council voted to rename the park “Bruce’s Beach” and placed a plaque honoring Willa and Charles’ legacy.
– On Juneteenth 2020, Manhattan Beach resident, spoken word artist, and activist Kavon Ward organized a picnic at Bruce’s Beach park to draw attention to the land seizure. She founded the advocacy coalition Justice for Bruce’s Beach and began pressing for the land to be returned to the Bruce family’s descendants.
– By October 2020, the Manhattan Beach City Council formed a Bruce’s Beach Task Force to formally investigate the injustice.
– The task force recommended a formal apology and a path to return the land.
– Meanwhile, Los Angeles County took action at the county level. In April 2021, Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn introduced a motion to return the county-owned parcels to the Bruce family’s descendants. The full Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in favor.
– They engaged the state legislature to pass Senate Bill 796 in September 2021, which cleared the legal path for the land to be returned to the Bruces.
– By June 2022, Marcus and Derrick Bruce — great-grandsons of Willa and Charles — were named the legal heirs of the property.
– They chose to sell it back to Los Angeles County for $20 million, this time as respected and recognized stakeholders in the transaction. This allowed them to benefit from the generational wealth long overdue that the land could have been generating for the family all this time.
Reflections
1. How is this story similar to the story about the Fred Hampton Pool from earlier this month?
This is a similar situation that shows how Black Americans were shut out from recreational activities due to the lack of desegregation efforts across most of the country. Both were water based leisure. White Americans actively tried to stop Black joy, considering they were not even on the same beach property as the people looking to shut them down. The roundabout entrance situation is also like the effort it took to bus people to the pool. It shows just how long reparations can take for Black Americans (the ones who are able to receive them).
2. Willa Bruce was an entrepreneur, just like Maggie L. Walker from another issue. What challenges did they each experience? How are their stories similar? How are they different?
They both understood the need for Black Americans to have financial and social independence and created space and opportunities for this. They both showed resilience when faced with harsh adversaries. They both built something within a community that looked different from them. The nature of their achievements is different due to recreation vs financial structures.
3. National attention–and action–was sparked by one activist’s public protest. What does this tell you about the role of protest in society?
Growing up, I think the narrative around protesters was always negative. At least in Texas. As I have started learning and uncovering more history, protests have proven to be effective and necessary. The status quo will never change if we don’t stand up against it. Violent vs Passionate, Riot vs Protest, Activist vs Aggressor, Insurgence vs Resistance, how you view something is all a mindset.
February 24th 2026: Memorial Day
– In May 1865, the city of Charleston, South Carolina lay in ruins after the end of the Civil War. A city largely abandoned by white residents, leaving a population of predominantly freed Black people.
– The city’s horse track had been converted to a makeshift prison camp where Union soldiers were tortured, killed, or neglected. There, at least 257 prisoners had died and their bodies were thrown hastily into a mass unmarked grave.
– About two dozen Black workers reburied the fallen into graves in neat rows, built a fence around the area, and added a sign: “Martyrs of the Race Course.” Then, they organized a day of memorial for the community to pay their respects.
– On May 1, 1865, roughly 10,000 people, most of them Black, gathered at the race track. People sang the Union song “John Brown’s Body,” carried baskets of flowers, wreaths, and crosses for the graves, gave speeches and sermons, and led a military procession.
– This was the first official, large-scale Decoration Day (the former name of what is now Memorial Day) on historical record. The event was featured in newspapers across the North and was recorded in several personal archives. But history was intent on pretending it didn’t exist.
– The official start of Memorial Day is attributed to a proclamation made three years later. Issued by General John A. Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (a Union veterans organization).
– May 30, 1868 was chosen as the official day to decorate the graves of fallen soldiers.
– The tradition spread quickly. By 1869, some 336 cities and towns in thirty-one states held parades and memorial services.
– New York became the first state to make Memorial Day a legal holiday in 1873, and other states followed throughout the late 1800s.
– Black veterans have always played a significant role, and used the occasion to remind people that the war was not just about North vs. South, but in pursuit of freedom and agency for all the country’s residents.
– After World War I ended in 1918, Memorial Day evolved to honor Americans who died in all wars, not just the Civil War.
– In 1971, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, moving Memorial Day to the last Monday in May, where it remains today.
Reflections
1. How might knowing this history change the way you observe Memorial Day going forward?
I can remember posting on instagram, in late middle early high school, a photo of an american flag taken from a park on memorial day once. I feel like I used to be obsessed with this country and thought that soldiers who fought and died for our freedom were incredible. While I do think laying your life on the line for a cause is commendable, I also now have an interesting view on the concept of enlisting in the Armed Forces, in fighting in wars, and in the systems that trap people within them hiding behind honor and freedom. Just the fact that they don’t openly tell us about how Memorial Day truly began says something. I have always just considered Memorial Day a day to celebrate my dad’s birthday. Now it really will be a time to remember him. However, I think learning this truth makes me view the holiday itself in a new way. It adds back the honor and connection that was lacking as of late.
2. What are other examples of Black history being overlooked or forgotten can you think of?
Black Wall Street
Mary Kenner
3. Does knowing that formerly enslaved Black people were the first to bring ritual to fallen soldiers change your understanding of Memorial Day? If so, why?
Yes, in a way. Like I mentioned, it makes me think that it is something worth celebrating. Not in a sense that I am happy to celebrate people killing one another, but I think many people in this world were probably killed due to many reasons other than a “fair fight” situation. What people were fighting for in the civil war was different than us going where we are not welcome and selfishly deciding to wreak havoc. However, I think they still ended up needing a draft for the civil war, which just goes to show that people are not too keen on fighting to the death. As you can see, I have conflicting emotions about this situation, but I do respect what the people of Charleston did, and what they started.
February 25th 2026: Trans Day of Remembrance
– Originally from Connecticut, Rita Hester had moved to Boston in her twenties and became a well-known and loved member of the local rock community. She was murdered on November 28th, 1998.
– When local news reported on Hester’s murder, they often misgendered her or incorrectly referred to her by her deadname. Over 250 people attended her candlelit vigil, all looking for a space to hold her life in the light it deserved.
– When transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith heard about Hester’s murder, it reminded her of Chanelle Pickett, another local Black trans woman who had been murdered three years prior.
– Smith was surprised to learn that none of her friends remembered Pickett’s story.
– Smith didn’t want people to forget. So on November 20, 1999, she and fellow trans activist Penni Ashe Matz hosted two vigils: one in San Francisco and one in Boston. That evening honored Pickett, who had died on that date four years prior, along with Hester and all others lost to anti-trans violence. This was the start of Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR).
– By 2010, TDOR was being held in over 185 cities across more than 20 countries.
– The week before November 20 is now recognized as Transgender Awareness Week, when communities celebrate the lives and legacies of transgender people and raise awareness about transphobia and anti-trans violence.
– In 2021, the Biden administration became the first to publicly recognize TDOR and name the number of trans people who lost their lives to violence. That same year, Representative Ayanna Pressley read all 46 of their names aloud on the House floor, joined by members of the Congressional Equality Caucus.
– That tradition of remembrance carries extra urgency right now. On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order defining sex for the federal government as a strictly male-female binary and ordered federal agencies to end all recognition of gender identity.
– Against that backdrop, gathering to say the names of those lost is both an act of remembrance and an act of resistance.
Reflections
1. Black trans women are much more likely to experience violence than other trans people. What does that tell us about the intersections of race and gender?
This explains a lot, and we have to consider that being Black in America is inherently dangerous. It also goes to show too that people may feel a certain way about trans people, and those feelings can then become heightened when a trans person is also a POC or if they are a woman or a man. Certain biases impact how people think and operate. If people believe women should behave a certain way or men should behave a certain way, they also apply that to all the ideas they have about different POC as well. A Black woman should do, x, y, z, not h. Race and gender go hand in had, as they are each opportunities to be perceived as a marginalized person. If the most at risk person in America is the Black Woman, then the Black Trans Woman surely fits into that as well. If this makes sense.
2. Gwendolyn Ann Smith started TDOR because she watched a community forget a murder in three years. What are the costs of forgetting — and who bears them?
The cost is everything. We have discussed this already, but remembering people, places, events, is both what keeps generations connected and what keeps truths from being rewritten. Right now being “the friend that’s too woke” is a talking point and sort of a joke, but at the same time, someone has to be there to remind people what is going on, so that history doesn’t disappear.
3. The Trump administration has moved to erase transgender identity from federal policy. How does a vigil that reads names out loud function as a political act?
Political acts are evolving. If the person with power over your rights is fighting to erase you, then proof of your existence is powerful. Similarly, many times people are not addressed by the names they have picked for themselves, so using correct names is also a form of political resistance against politicians and news outlets who are using incorrect deadnames. Gathering in groups is also a way to show up and be counted.
February 26th 2026: Freedom’s Eve
– Juneteenth honors the date that Union troops traveled to Galveston, TX to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. Some believe that enslaved people hadn’t heard the news, but that’s likely untrue.
– When Union troops arrived in places like Galveston, they only reinforced what enslaved communities had been eagerly anticipating. Some even held celebrations on New Year’s Eve in anticipation of the event.
– The occasion was known as “Watch Night” or “Freedom’s Eve,” and has influenced Black cultural New Year’s Eve observances ever since.
– The idea was inspired by the Watch Nights of Protestant churches, where communities would anticipate the return of Jesus.
– Lincoln announced a preliminary version of his proclamation on September 22, 1862, after the Battle of Antietam. It authorized the freeing of all enslaved people in Confederate states if they refused to return to the Union by January 1, 1863.
– But his personal assurances didn’t make it in the headlines, so African American communities, buoyed with hope, counted down until the new year. On the evening of December 31, 1862, enslaved and freed African Americans congregated to anticipate the proclamation taking effect.
– Most of these celebrations were in secret, as there were laws forbidding both enslaved and freed people from gathering.
– These celebrations were often rooted in worship, and faith leaders would lead prayers and other practices from Christianity, Islam, and indigenous faiths.
– These celebrations were usually paired with a feast of collard greens, which represent prosperity, and black-eyed peas, which represent luck and fortune. Together, they reflected the possibility and potential of a new year. To this day, many African American communities eat these foods — particularly black-eyed peas — on New Year’s Eve to invite good fortune into the new year.
Reflections
1. Why do you think President Lincoln chose to announce the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 but wait until January 1, 1863 to put it into effect? What might have been the advantages and disadvantages of giving the Confederacy this three-month warning period?
What an interesting point. Why did he do that? If the Confederacy had stopped fighting would they have been able to negotiate things better for themselves? It sounds like if they had stopped fighting they may have been able to keep people enslaved in the south because Lincoln wanted to remain one union more than anything. Did it allow for time to prepare their minds and populations and accommodations? In the article it says they wanted to win another battle before finalizing things. I feel like giving them that time allowed both sides to plan and I’m not sure that was good. Having a grace period between the announcement and the deadline makes me worried that people were maybe taken and moved with families, sold, or even killed…because I feel like some people just are that evil.
2. This issue describes how enslaved people risked punishment to gather even before the Emancipation Proclamation. What does this tell us about the importance of faith and community in resistance?
I think we have all learned just how important that is. To feel like you belong and have something to believe in really does keep you going. It is easy to give up when you feel like you are alone or when you cannot see impact happening. With a community of people you can feel and see change happening before your eyes. When someone is counting on you it’s harder to give up.
3. Enslaved people had been escaping to Union lines and demanding wages even before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. How did this help push the government toward ending slavery? What does this tell us about who the real agents of change were during this period?
It helped on both fronts I believe because having a physical presence helps people truly visualize what is going on. Seeing something makes it easier to believe or face. The more people that escaped the less people were there to perform the duties previously occupied by enslaved people. Also, it puts into perspective too that enslaved people were not simply waiting around to be freed. We know people escaped and fought back, but it goes to show that if you don’t advocate nothing will be done. They didn’t simply escape and hope for the best. They escaped and asked for wages, petitioned for laws to be changed, created systems to boost the economy, and really bolstered a place for themselves that left people without a choice but to call for the emancipation of slavery. White people did not come up with the idea to end slavery on their own.
February 27th 2026: African Burial Ground
– By 1625, the Dutch West India Company was shipping enslaved Africans to build New Amsterdam, the city that would become New York. This labor force cleared the land, built military forts and commercial spaces, and widened old Lenape trails into roads wide enough for wagons
– When the English took control in 1664, they deepened the city’s investment in the slave trade. The city’s name, after all, was for James II, the Duke of York, a key investor in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, England’s primary slave trading enterprise.
– By 1703, over 42% of households held slaves, and by the mid-1700s, Africans made up more than 20% of New York’s population, making colonial New York the largest urban concentration of enslaved people outside of Charleston, South Carolina.
– When enslaved or freed people passed away, however, there were few options for honoring them with a proper burial.
– Families carried their dead past the Wall Street wall to a plot of land in a ravine.
– Afraid that gatherings at this space would give enslaved and freed African people a place to mobilize and plan revolt, the city tried to control how this space was used. They passed laws capping funeral processions at twelve people and banning burials at night, a direct response to traditional African burial rituals.
– This burial ground grew to cover more than six acres and held the remains of as many as 20,000 people, nearly 40 percent of them children.
– As the population of the city grew in the late 18th and 19th centuries, city planners began to expand the urban development of lower Manhattan, filling the nearby ravines with soil. A new cemetery for Black people had opened in the Lower East Side, giving a closer, more accessible space for locals to honor their dead. The original burial ground was buried under 25 feet of fill and forgotten. In 1795, the land was sold off as house lots.
– In 1991, construction began on a 34-story office building at 290 Broadway, right on the site of the burial ground. When they found skeletal remains, this caused an end to the development project.
– There were 419 remains exhumed and sent to Howard University’s Department of Anthropology. The team was able to learn much about the hardships of enslavement on the remains. It also helped them document the different regions of Western Africa present in the population based on the burial rituals evident in how each body was laid to rest. Meanwhile, President George Bush designated the site for a memorial to honor those resting beneath.
– In 2003, each of the 419 remains were returned to their original resting place. Each was placed in a hand-carved wooden coffin made in Ghana, and reinterred during a sacred, week-long ceremony known as the “Rites of Ancestral Return.”
– On February 27, 2006, President Bush signed a Presidential Proclamation naming the African Burial Ground a national monument—the first ever dedicated to Africans of early New York and Americans of African descent. The memorial opened in 2007, and the visitor center followed in 2010.
Reflections
1. What does it mean that a burial ground this significant was forgotten for nearly 200 years? Who benefits from that kind of forgetting?
I personally did not even realize this memorial existed. I know that I love visiting NYC, and am excited to add this to my next itinerary. What I was thinking while reading was one, I am always in need of history refreshers and reminders because in my head I didn’t even know this much about New York and how that impacts the underbelly of the city and it’s bigotry that may not be as loud but is still present. Two, I was thinking how acts like these, creating memorials and monuments and the like used to be more common (dumb ass in the white house now is destroying so much) and that it makes me think all presidents were pretty much doing the same thing, and the parties didn’t mean all that much. I don’t want to take away from this memorial, that’s not what I mean, I just think when people talk about the good things presidents did while I was growing up, it’s only the things your party wants you to remember about them, and not the stuff they did that may please the other side. I am getting off topic, so to bring it back, I think the American capitalist and patriarchal and white supremacist society surely benefits from this forgetting. In the sense that it may be subtle but if we don’t remember that there were enslaved people all over the country, not just in the South, or that places that are beacons of a cultural phenomena like “Broadway” or classic institutions like City Hall exist to cover up history, then we slowly stop seeing people and institutions as violent or in the wrong.
2. The descendant community fought to control how their ancestors were studied, memorialized, and returned. What does their fight tell us about who usually gets to decide how history is preserved and who doesn’t?
I feel like typically the government gets involved in decisions like this, and especially not people who understands the intricacies every culture and community practices. They had to work hard to get the rights to control the memorialization and preservation. Not just the physical aspects of what they did, but the small details like how people are described and how scenes get painted in the retelling of history. POC voices are not always respected and you can tell when the narrative feels forced or falsified in ways that are not genuine.
3. The people buried in the African Burial Ground built the infrastructure of a city that denied them basic rights. Where do you see that same contradiction today?
AI seems to do this, using other peoples work to train their systems, usually either against our will or in other developing communities across the globe. Gentrification happens every day right before our eyes.
February 28th 2026: Black History Month
– An educator and scholar, author and historian, Dr. Carter G. Woodson devoted his life to the preservation and education of Black history.
– He is most known for establishing Negro History Week in 1926, which led to the Black History Month that we celebrate today. Woodson chose the second week in February because it contained the birthdays of two major influences in Black life at the time: Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and Frederick Douglass (February 14).
– It began during the Civil Rights movement. A group of Black students at Kent University organized a sit-in on campus and some students were arrested and the school wouldn’t drop the charges.
– In February 1968, over 250 students staged a silent walkout that was so effective that all charges were dropped, and the university committed to investing in African American and pan-African studies.
– Moreover, they expanded their Negro History Week to Black History Month, a month long focus of Black studies. This is the first known formal commemoration of the commemoration we know today.
– In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month as a federal commemoration.
– Woodson also founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, an organization committed to “collecting records pertaining to Black America’s past and disseminate the truth about African American history.” The organization was later renamed the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History in 1973, and is referred to as ASALH for the remainder of this article.
– At the request of Mary McLeod Bethune (recognize this name?) the first woman president of ASALH from 1936 to 1951, the ASALH published the “Negro History Bulletin,” a monthly newsletter curated by Black leaders that provided a comprehensive overview of Black history.
– The resource was designed to provide middle and high school teachers with enough context to create lesson plans for their students. Now referred to as the Black History Bulletin, this publication is still produced and distributed by the ASALH.
– The rise of digital newsletters (like the one you’re reading) makes it easier for journalists, historians, and educators to disseminate useful information directly.
– Physical bulletins, often referred to as zines, are disseminating critical information on systemic injustices.
– And it’s all necessary because many school curricula today still fail to provide a comprehensive overview of Black history in the U.S. Since January 2021, at least 18 states have passed laws restricting the teaching of “critical race theory” or, more broadly, how race and systemic racism are taught in K-12 public schools.
Reflections
1. Dr. Woodson recognized that school curriculum was being used as a tool to uphold anti-Black sentiment. Where do you see that same dynamic playing out today?
The extremists on the right coming for Critical Race Theory, banning books, they just mentioned something on NPR the other day actually where they interviewed students and professors at A&M and TTU about a new implementation for getting specific approval to even discuss race, gender, and sexuality in a class.
2. The students at Kent University didn’t wait for permission. They organized, walked out, and won. What would that kind of collective action look like in your community right now?
Students and Faculty are already protesting at TTU specifically. Libraries and bookstores have “Banned Book” sections to still promote the literature where they can. It takes extra planning,and classic jumping through of hoops, but rules can be navigated and outsmarted. They paved the way for walk-outs, sit-ins, book clubs and meetups to discuss books and history with students who are missing it in their curricula.
3. Independent publishing — newsletters, zines, bulletins — has always been part of how Black history survives. What stories in your own community are waiting for someone to write them down?
I don’t know what to say because I am sure I have ideas that have certainly already been explored by the actual Black and other POC communities in Denver. What I can do is seek them out. Denver Zine Fest may not have accepted me as a contributor, but that doesn’t mean I can’t attend and find these stories.
Madeline Daily 