By Benny Schaft
February 4, 2026
Depiction of Nat Turner
A “black revolution is more powerful than two atomic bombs.”
– Malcolm X, “Ballot or the Bullet” speech, April 3, 1964
Why is Black History Month significant to us as Black youth? It is the only time of the year when, for one month, we can truly learn about our history and what it means for our liberation today.
February 2026 marks the centennial founding of Black History Month by Black historian Carter G. Woodson.
Nowadays, the U.S. white supremacist structure has made it clear that it wants to erase, distort and outright lie about our history. This is the cornerstone of the capitalist education system spoon-fed to us from the time we are very young until the time we graduate from these institutions. It is forced down our throats that the long struggle for liberation is not only not significant but downright blasphemous to commemorate and celebrate.
With this, let us talk about one of the biggest tools used in the United States: propaganda and cover-ups. These are especially used to degrade and diminish the minds of Black youth to learn our history and to want to learn more. The teaching of our history will encourage Black youth to examine deeper the material conditions that the same ruling class has placed on them and to inspire them to resist these same conditions.
An example of this racist propaganda is how a white supremacist like President Andrew Jackson is praised, while a heroic Black abolitionist like Nat Turner is demonized in the bourgeois history books. This irony is something every single one of us as Black youth has experienced. We are forced to swallow how then General Jackson was such a great revolutionary for his stance at the Battle of New Orleans of 1815 against the British but advocated for the genocide of Indigenous nations defending their land while ordering the U.S. Calvary to steal it.
But on the flip side, it is drummed into the heads of Black youth that the rebellion Nat Turner led against the slavocracy in Southampton County, Virginia, was completely wrong and that Jackson and the U.S. government were justified in implementing stronger pro-slavery laws following the rebellion of Turner and other enslaved abolitionists seeking liberation.
This is further put on display with the capitalist class and the Trump administration’s efforts to erase any monuments concerning Black history, especially the idea of Black liberation relating to slavery, civil rights or Jim Crow. This erasure is meant to further stop the efforts of Black youth from becoming revolutionized. The capitalist class and the Trump administration are doubling down to make sure that this doesn’t happen, but they are doomed to fail.
Co-option of our heroes
Claudia Jones
The billionaire bosses know that Black History Month has always played a pivotal role in radicalizing us as youth and setting us on the path of becoming revolutionaries. This is why the United States education system is historically white supremacist and anti-Black. It is why we do not learn about important figures such as Claudia Jones, Paul Robeson, Lucy Parsons, Kwame Ture, George Jackson or Louise Thompson Patterson. And those who we do hear about have their legacies either whitewashed or co-opted.
The most infamous case of this co-option is with Martin Luther King Jr., who the ruling class has made it their mission, especially in the institutions of education, to promote only as a civil rights icon but downplay the fact that before his assassination, Dr. King criticized the war in Vietnam as being “morally wrong.” This led to him calling the United States the world’s biggest purveyor of violence. He made this declaration in his “Beyond Vietnam” address on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church.
On a personal note, like many others I have experienced first hand having to learn on my own about figures such as Imam Jamil Al-Amin (aka H. Rap Brown) and President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.
To repeat, Black History Month is so vital not only to Black people in general, but especially for Black youth to understand the role Black people have played in the revolutionary class struggle for liberation here and throughout the Global South, as well as to inspire them to actively join the ongoing class struggle today.
The writer is 20 years old.
