What, to the enslaved American, is your Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass asked in 1852, demanding that a nation built on freedom reckon with its contradictions. Today, as we mark Black History Month, we must ask: What, to Black Appalachia, is this annual observance?

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Is it a time of celebration? Yes, but with a complexity that the world often overlooks. Too many still believe the myth that Appalachia is only white, erasing the generations of Black miners, farmers, educators, and artists who have shaped this region’s past and present. We lift the stories of the Free Hill community in Tennessee, of the Black coal miners of West Virginia, of Affrilachian poets who carve out space in a landscape that did not always recognize them. We honor our ancestors who endured company stores and labor exploitation, built flooded and forgotten towns, and made homes in these hills despite it all.

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Is it a time of education? It must be. Black Appalachians have always been here, challenging the single-story narratives imposed upon us. From the saltworks of the Kanawha Valley to the Harlan County picket lines, from Lincoln School in Pikeville to the Highlander Center in Tennessee, Black Appalachians have been at the heart of movements for justice, civil rights, and workers’ dignity. The world needs to know that Black history not only belongs to the streets of Harlem or the churches of Montgomery but also echoes in the hollers and coalfields of the mountains.

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But is it also a time of reckoning? Without a doubt, it is. Black Appalachia is too often left out of both Black History and Appalachian history as if we are ghosts instead of the heartbeat of this place. We cannot allow our presence to be erased. We must demand that our stories be told not just as a footnote in history books but as central to the narrative of this nation.

So, we ask: What, to Black Appalachia, is this Black History Month? It is a call to action, a reminder that we belong here, have always belonged here, and will continue to build, resist, and thrive here. It is a demand for recognition, not just in February but in every discussion of what it means to be Appalachian and American.

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Black history did not begin with slavery and did not end with a month. Black Appalachia is history, now and in the future.