‘More Than a Month’ Questions Black History Month

“Welcome to February, the shortest and what seems like the coldest month of the year.” As he begins his film, More Than a Month, with this most familiar observation of Black History Month, Shukree Hassan Tilghman sets up an equally familiar storyline. That is, Tilghman embarks on a quest. This quest starts out as one thing (a petition to end Black History Month) and turns into something else, a pursuit of the definition of history.

The sheer scope of that latter pursuit makes the film — which premieres on Independent Lens 16 February — ambitious, both despite and because of its lack of resolution. The movie frames that quest with Tilghman’s initial thinking about Black History Month, and frames that thinking with his own background. For the first part, the film invokes a fairly famous 2006 Mike Wallace interview with Morgan Freeman, in which the actor calls black history month “ridiculous.” For the second part, the film reveals that Tilghman’s parents are both activists, American Muslims too, and so he came up in a household where he was encouraged to “question what was the norm and why.” As he remembers that household, Tilghman plays his own dad, pressing Apocalypse 91 toward the low-angle camera, situating you as the child Tilghman, at the moment he was first thrilled by Public Enemy’s resistance. “You’re gonna dig this one, kid,” he says earnestly, and a little comically.

This moment introduces a pattern in the film, as it raises significant, even sobering questions, while also offering a bit of antic framing. Sometimes, this strategy is repetitive or uninformative (person on the street interviews reveal that some support BHM and some don’t) and sometimes it borrows from someone else to make the obvious point (concerned that the Black History Month campaign by Heineken has become a means for corporate exploitation, the film excerpts The Colbert Report on that campaign).

Sometimes, the strategy helps to underscore the seriousness of the central question: whom does Black History Month benefit, and how? Tilghman says more than once that he’s looking for “something deeper” than whether Black History Month is a scam or a useful institution, and he ends up posting that depth as an inquiry into history, broadly conceived — crucial to recover and absorb and also, to question.

And with this in mind, Tilghman comes to a “something deeper,” even as the film adopts an occasionally unimaginative structure, namely, a literal road trip wherein he travels from New York to Harvard (where the “Father of Black History Month” Carter Woodson received his PhD in History in 1912) to Atlanta (where Dr. King is memorialized) to Lexington, Virginia (where Civil War re-enactors are campaigning for a Confederate History Month). In each place, he interviews an expert (James Sidanius, the sociologist who developed “social dominance theory,” or Lewis Williams, CEO of Burrell Communications, who describes a “Black History Season,” organized around what can be sold to whom), sequences comprised of the usual walks around campus or the chats across a desk.

As well, several episodes offer something else, alternate bits of history, or rather, images of what those who claim access to history might be seeing. And so, after politely listening to one of the Sons of Confederate Veterans insist that “slavery is a dead issue,” or maybe part of an effort to “squash Confederate history,” Tilghman offers himself dressed up like a Ken Burns-style Confederate soldier, writing an endearing letter home under the sounds of explosions and a pensive violin melody. It’s a striking moment, not because it makes fun of The Civil War per se (though it does that too), but because it draws attention to the many ways “history” is constructed.

Even if Burns’ sober formulation is carefully researched and widely disseminated, it’s also no more complete or even necessarily correct than some other versions, less expensive and less available. It’s also not more or less true than an exceedingly personal history (say, Tilghman’s dad proffering the CD). The value of history lies not so much in its truth or its collective valence, but in its effects — how it shapes what comes after. Tilghman makes clear his own conclusion: “The push for a Confederate History Month makes me understand one thing. History is about power, the power to control the story, even for a brief period of time.” If Confederate History Month might make “the history of slavery… simply about economic structure and be easily forgotten” or the Confederate flag “about valiant confederate soldiers and nothing more.” The Sons of Confederate Veterans are hardly the only community or institution with a vested interest in a history, or the only group whose version of history simplifies and reduces and leaves out other people’s experience. This might even be understood as a definition of “history,” a set of stories that can only be limited, biased, and sometimes, untrue.

This isn’t precisely the conclusion reached by More Than a Month. The film puts most of its energy into finding value in Black History Month, understanding the purposes it serves, and also the purposes served by ongoing debates over it. To this end, the documentary considers the subjective nature of history, as well as how it’s politicized and commercialized, and does so by way of a plainly commercial and political format. This doesn’t mean it answers the questions it asks. But it shows how the usual answers aren’t nearly smart enough.