Black August was never meant to be another heritage month. It is a practice of memory, discipline, political education, and collective responsibility.
Black August did not begin as an aesthetic, a social-media theme, or a generalized celebration of Blackness. Its early practices centered remembrance, political education, fasting, physical discipline, collective responsibility, and resistance. (New York Amsterdam News)
There is something that happens when Black history becomes popular.
It gets cleaned up, sanitized, rebranded, repackaged, and sold back to the originators.
The radical parts become inspirational quotes. The best example of this is how we see each and every time MLK gets quoted as a deflection (even when his own daughter says that’s not what he meant)
We are constantly handed "Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that" when we express the anger, frustration, and pure exhaustion of the system of whiteness, yet I have never heard “ I fear I have integrated my people into a burning house”
Resistance becomes resilience.
Organizers become icons.
Political demands become vague calls for unity.
And eventually, we are left celebrating people whose actual politics we have been taught not to discuss; let’s have a moment for Malcom X…
Malcolm X.
Malcolm may be one of the clearest examples of what happens when a radical becomes safe enough for public consumption.
We get the glasses. The finger-pointing. The quotes. The posters.
The aesthetic of Malcolm. Hell, we even got a movie (so we should be happy, right?)
But Malcolm’s political evolution?
His critiques of capitalism?
His analysis of white liberalism?
His internationalism and insistence on understanding Black struggle as a human rights issue, not merely an American civil rights problem?
His willingness to rethink his own political positions as his understanding of the world expanded?
That Malcolm requires a little more conversation, a little more nuance, and a whole lot more uncomfortability.
And this is what sanitization does.
It does not always erase people.
Sometimes it does something much more effective:
It keeps the person and removes the politics.
We are allowed to admire the courage without examining what required courage.
Celebrate the resistance without identifying what was being resisted.
Quote the revolutionary without seriously engaging the revolution.
And eventually the person becomes so culturally familiar that we can convince ourselves we know them without ever having studied what they actually believed.
That is why political education matters.
And that is why I do not want us to do this with Black August.
I do not want Black August reduced to a fist graphic on a black background.
I don’t want George Jackson turned into another name we post every August without reading him.
I don’t want “mutual aid” and “collective care” lifted from histories of survival and resistance, stripped of their political context, and returned to us as trendy language for things our communities have practiced for generations.
And I definitely don’t want us talking about Black August without talking about prisons, political prisoners, state power, resistance, study, discipline, and collective responsibility.
Because Black August was never asking us simply to remember that Black people struggled.
It was asking us to study what they understood about the systems they were struggling against.
And that is a very different kind of (re)membering.
Memory Without Political Education Is Easy to Manipulate
Knowing someone’s name is not the same as knowing their politics. This happens all too often when Black authors, freedom fighters, revolutionaries, and more are constantly quoted back to us from the latest liberal progressive book club. Led by the most woke white woman led anti racist, group.
Knowing that something happened is not the same as understanding why it happened.
And celebrating resistance without studying the conditions that produced it leaves us vulnerable to repeating the same systems with different language, as we can see from the current state of the world and our elected leaders across the board.
Political education gives us context.
It helps us connect the individual story to the structure around it.
George Jackson isn’t simply the story of a Black man who died in prison.
Jonathan Jackson isn’t simply the story of a 17-year-old who entered a courthouse with guns.
Angela Davis isn’t simply an Afro on a T-shirt.
Malcolm isn’t simply “by any means necessary.”
Martin isn’t simply “love.”
When we remove context, we can make almost anyone say almost anything.
Black August asks us to put the context back.
And to do that, we have to go back to where Black August actually began.
Black August Was Born Behind Prison Walls
Black August grew from the Black liberation struggle inside California prisons in the 1970s, particularly the organizing and political education surrounding George Jackson and other incarcerated freedom fighters. The observance developed to honor George and Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain, Khatari Gaulden, and Ruchell Magee, among others. (New York Amsterdam News)
That origin matters.
Because Black August did not emerge from an institution deciding Black history deserved recognition.
It emerged among incarcerated Black people living inside one of the clearest examples of state power we have:
the prison.
And they responded not only with resistance.
They responded with study.
With political education.
With physical discipline.
With collective practice.
With memory.
That distinction matters to me.
Because when people are denied access to power, one of the first forms of power they can reclaim is the ability to understand the conditions they are living inside, and the ways they can begin to get free.
🔒 This Is Where We Go Deeper
Black August asks more of us than knowing George Jackson existed or recognizing a few names every August.
It asks us to study.
Below the paywall, we’re going back to the people, politics, and practices that made Black August what it is:
Paid subscriptions allow me to continue creating rigorous, accessible liberation education while building the frameworks, resources, and communal practices that move us beyond performance and toward embodied transformation.
This is the reciprocity that keeps Liberation Education sustainable.
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No proof required.
No story owed.
Just ask.
Take a breath. 🌬️
