I'll Make Me a World - by Jarvis R Givens Hardcover

Book Synopsis

On its one-hundredth anniversary, a powerful and essential meditation on the origins, evolution, and future of Black History Month from one of America's leading historians of Black education and the author of American Grammar.

In I'll Make Me a World, acclaimed Harvard scholar Jarvis R. Givens takes us on a personal and political journey through the 100-year history of Black History Month--from its radical beginnings in 1926 as "Negro History Week" to its role today as a celebration and flashpoint in America's cultural battles. Drawing on archival research, personal stories involving family and students, and especially the wisdom of Black educators, Givens recovers the legacy of Carter G. Woodson and many others who envisioned Black history as a liberatory force--knowledge that shapes who we are, how we resist, and what we dream.

With striking clarity, Givens challenges today's myopic commemorations of iconic figures and urges us to expand our understanding of Black history to include the everyday lives of ordinary people--the "workadays" whose stories have long gone untold but form critical parts of Black history. Indeed, people who played important roles in passing on Black memories that helped disrupt oppressively narrow perspectives on human life. Givens also attends to the labor involved in preserving Black history, especially in intellectual environments where it is constantly denigrated and undervalued, and he insists that more transparency about such processes is necessary to ensure this worthy tradition is passed on to future generations.

I'll Make Me A World is a call to remember, reimagine, and reclaim an intellectual tradition built by communities well before our time, and to take seriously what is politically at stake in its preservation. At a time when Black history is under attack, this book offers an inspiring vision for how it can still be a source of power, truth, and possibility.

Review Quotes

"Givens offers a timely, needed, and excellent book that will appeal to educators and general audiences." - Library Journal (Starred Review)
"In I'll Make Me a World, Jarvis Givens recasts Black History Month as a century-long struggle over memory and power. Through meticulous archival research and deep attention to the pedagogies of Black educators, Givens traces how teachers, students, and community organizers transformed the study of Black life into a sustained practice of resistance. This is masterful intellectual history from below--an account of how ordinary people have fought to define what counts as history and who counts as human. Rooted in the long fight to define the scope and meaning of the past, I'll Make Me a World illuminates how the preservation and transmission of Black history have always been acts of political courage and collective imagination." - Elizabeth Hinton, author of America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

"African American studies scholar Givens (American Grammar) offers a moving reflection on a century's worth of Black History Week and Month celebrations... Framing today's political efforts to erase Black history from schools and public institutions as part of a longer cycle of civil rights battles, Givens argues that history is always political and shaped by those with the authority to record it... The result is a powerful meditation on Black history's role in American life today."

- Publishers Weekly

"This urgent book is about so much more than a commemoration on the calendar. With Black history under attack, it issues a call to arms. Against those who would deny and disavow struggles against enslavement, impoverishment, and racial violence, Jarvis Givens bids us to tell the honest truth. Resisting attempts to control how we teach, recall, and represent our common past, he offers a magnificent tribute to the memory workers who have given us the tools to achieve more freedom, fairness, and justice in the world of the future."

- Vincent Brown, author of Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

"Givens traces the path of the month from its grassroots origins to its now-indelible position in American culture. In vivid prose that's enlivened by personal reflections, Givens examines how, beginning generations ago, teachers, librarians, writers, and archivists pieced together limited resources to preserve the Black past and offer critical counternarratives to the celebratory nature of U.S. history. The author draws on archival documents, speeches, plays, and other ephemera to demonstrate how engagement with the past was a critical part of the African American experience. Givens rightly emphasizes that those working to keep Black history alive have long been animated by a spirit of protest... A necessary and urgent account for this current moment."

- Kirkus Reviews

"Jarvis Givens reminds us that Black History is rooted in the everyday efforts of Black people who are deeply committed to the liberatory project of bringing out the genius in all who orbit around them. Through phenomenal storytelling, both personal and historical, he recounts transformative moments, preserved by the labor of memory workers, declaring why knowing the past is a political investment in our future. I love this book!"

- Ula Yvette Taylor, author of The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam

"As Black History Month celebrates its centennial, Jarvis R. Givens' I'll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month arrives as a compelling exploration of the origins, evolution, and enduring significance of this landmark observance... The book arrives at a pivotal moment when the teaching of Black history faces challenges across schools and public discourse. Givens' work is a clarion call to reclaim, reimagine, and celebrate a century of Black educational activism and cultural memory. With striking clarity, he invites readers to see Black history as a living, revolutionary force that informs identity, resistance, and hope. I'll Make Me a World is both a scholarly achievement and a practical guide for educators, activists, and anyone seeking to understand the richness of Black history beyond canonical narratives. As Givens shows, Black history is not only a commemoration of the past--it is a tool for shaping a more equitable and imaginative future."

- New York Trend
"In an era when we are experiencing issues similar to those that early Black scholars confronted in the neglect, misinterpretation, and myths about Black history in Africa, the Diaspora, and the United States, this timely and cogent book is a must read. Indeed, it is an antidote to efforts which seek to erase the real facts about the Black past" - Robert L. Harris, Jr., Woodson Medallion Scholar and Past-President of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History
"In an era where our histories are being discarded, distorted, and denied, Jarvis Givens reminds us that we have always preserved our past, our culture, our customs, and our traditions. Black History Month is a testament to the resilience and the spirit of resistance that is Black culture." - Gloria Ladson-Billings, author of The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children
"In I'll Make Me a World, Jarvis Givens gives us a timely and vital history of the 100-year journey from Negro History Week to what we now know as Black History Month. It wasn't easy getting there, and current events are proving it's not easy to keep it. The founder of Negro History Week, Carter G. Woodson, spoke of the great mission of uncovering our past to fortify ourselves for the hard work of making America live up to its promises. Now, by excavating how Black educators, archivists, and activists organized and sustained this tradition over a century, Givens shows how to breathe life into Black History Month so that it can summon us for the struggle we are in now." - Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University