Black History Month, which begins Tuesday, is a time to celebrate the accomplishments of black Americans, examine the progress that has been made toward equality and also understand what must still be done.

“The significance of Black History Month is that during that month, all citizens get a chance to see, to hear and to engage in productive discussions about equality and excellence as all of us pursue the American dream,” said George Jackson, assistant dean of the Graduate College and president of the Ames branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Leonard Perry, director of Multicultural Student Affairs and associate dean of students, said the best way to describe the month is with the word “sankofa” from the African Akan language.

“Sankofa is a term that translates to returning to the past in order to move forward,” Perry said.

The month is an opportunity to educate everyone, regardless of race, on black heritage and culture and to use that foundation to look at contemporary issues, he said.

According to the Library of Congress, Black History Month began on Feb. 12, 1926 as Black History Week, which was created by Harvard-educated historian Carter G. Woodson as an observance of the accomplishments of black Americans. The month of February was chosen to coincide with the birth dates of abolitionist Frederick Douglas on Feb. 14 and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 12.

In 1976, the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History successfully lobbied to extend Black History Week into a month-long observance.

Christopher Curtis, assistant professor of history, said one of the early steps toward integration was blacks’ involvement in the armed forces during World War I. The 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which deal with equal rights and voting, were also important as early progress, he said.

Curtis said one of the most important events that led to a greater advancement of blacks happened after the Civil War Reconstruction Era.

“The development of the Howard [University School of Law] in Washington, D.C. was where African-American civil rights leaders and lawyers were trained, most notably Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice,” he said.

Marshall argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The court’s decision declaring segregation in schools was inherently unequal was a major victory for blacks’ equal treatment, Curtis said.

Jackson said significant progress has been made toward equality in the past century. He said extreme inequality has existed in the past, with even the fundamental rights of black people not being respected.

“In 1909, when the NAACP was founded, the lynching of African-Americans was a frequent occurrence, and most of these lynchings went unchallenged,” Jackson said. “Today, that would not happen.”

He said key legislation during the civil rights era was a major step toward equality.

A more recent milestone is the 2003 Michigan U.S. Supreme Court cases, in which affirmative action policies were again upheld, Jackson said.

Jackson said there is still progress to be made.

“As we speak today, the life expectancy of African-Americans is about 10 to 15 years shorter than the life expectancy for white Americans,” he said. “The unemployment rate of African-Americans is twice as high.”