Reflecting on Black History Month

An email message sent to the Assumption Community on February 7, 2025:

Dear Campus Community, 

As we celebrate Black History Month, I’ve been thinking about a passage I’ve often taught, as many of you surely have, from W.E.B. DuBois’ essay “The Talented Tenth.” There’s plenty with which to agree and disagree in that essay, but all of it deserves a hearing. In one well known passage, he says this: 

I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too. I believe that next to the founding of Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro education since the war, has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men…. 

Those words reflect the language of his time. DuBois articulates something timeless about Assumption’s mission—and about serious injustices that, in my view, pervade American higher education.  

Re-reading the essay, I was struck by the phrase “and for white boys, too.” Everyone benefits from learning skills. But in America today, a bipartisan consensus assumes that liberal education is a luxury for the privileged and that no one coming from a less privileged background could possibly be interested in the pursuit of truth for its own sake. Limiting the horizons of anyone who seeks a humanizing education is unjust. To do so and call it advocacy on behalf of the less privileged is obscene. Many children of privilege thrive in technical programs, and many students who come from less yearn to ask enduring questions. Assumption’s commitment to access for anyone who seeks our education and is qualified to succeed arises from the principle DuBois articulates. 

DuBois also speaks of the humanizing power of liberal education. Catholic liberal education is premised on the idea that, as human persons made in the image of God, we intrinsically seek truth, goodness, and beauty. That is entirely compatible with career preparation. Indeed, it is the best career preparation there is.  

This Black History Month is a fitting time to recommit ourselves to those ideas. It is also a fitting time to explore the richness, diversity, and complexity of Black history in America—and to remember that we all bear responsibility for the history we have yet to make together. 

I encourage you to engage in the many opportunities for celebration, learning, and reflection on campus this month, including Assumption’s third annual Ecumenical Worship Service at 7 PM on Thursday, February 20, in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. The service will be led by Dr. Conway Campbell, our Vice President for Student Success and an ordained Baptist minister and will feature music led by the Kuumba Singers of Harvard College.

Later this spring, Dr. Trent Masiki, director of Black Studies and Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston, will present “Co-conspirators in the Struggle: Afro-Latino and African American Literary Fraternalism.” The talk will be based on his recent book, The Afro-Latino Memoir: Race, Ethnicity, & Literary Interculturalism, which won the 2023 Anna Julia Cooper and C.L.R. James Award from the National Council for Black Studies. 

Keep an eye on the Portal and the weekly student activities email for additional events this month. 

Sincerely,  
Greg Weiner, Ph.D. 
President