February: Short on Days, Long on History

February may be the shortest month of the calendar, but it holds some time-honored events including Groundhog Day, Valentines Days, Presidents Day, Flannel Day, and many more. February is also Black History Month, a time to honor and celebrate the central role of African Americans in U.S. History. And, as with so many significant events in U.S. history, libraries play a role.

Black History Month actually began as “Negro History Week” in 1926 when it was launched by the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. The group is now the ASALH – Association for the Study of African American Life and History – and each year it introduces new programming to celebrate that year’s theme. This year’s theme is A Century of Black History Commemorations.

2026 is not only the 250th anniversary of the United States, but it also marks the 100th year of the ASALH and the 50th year of the U.S. officially recognizing February as Black History Month, which seemed to me a perfect time to celebrate this year’s theme by commemorating someone that is likely unfamiliar to you – Dorothy Porter.

Dorothy Porter was born in 1905 and later earned B.A. in 1928 from Howard University and was appointed as the Chief Librarian there in 1930. Two years later she became the first African American to earn a library science degree from Columbia University. Both of these accomplishments were especially notable at the time because public libraries were segregated. After earning her degree from Columbia, she returned to work at Brown in the Moorland Foundation, known today as the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

In working to enhance the accessibility of items in the collection there, she realized that the system of arrangement, the Dewey Decimal Classification System, was inadequate and not representative of the thousands of items she was working to categorize. The system at the time only had two categories for works by and about black people – “slavery” and “colonization.” Porter spent the next 40 years of her life working tirelessly to “classify works by genre and author" to "highlight the foundational role of black people in all subject areas."

Beyond the cataloguing and classifying work she did, Porter was a lover of books and knowledge. According to many sources, she said “The only rewarding thing for me is to bring to light information that no one knows.” This reflects the continuing importance and value of libraries today. They are places to enlighten us all.

In my own quest to honor Black History Month and bring light to my knowledge base, I read Isaac’s Song by Daniel Black. This story by and about a young back writer was not only beautiful but thought-provoking and eye-opening, and I highly recommend it. I found it at

Wickson, which continues to be an endless source of ways to celebrate and commemorate the people and events that make us who we are today.