Black History Month 2019 Wins

Let's admit it, this Black History Month wasn't like last year's.

A lot has happened, not very much of it good, so much so it has led to a few of us wanting to toss out this month and move our celebrations of Blackness to June (because Juneteenth and melanin pops all year but especially in summer).

But before we throw the whole month away, we need to shout out the amazing things that happened this month, and we may see that, while understated, this Black History Month was actually lit.

Here are some inspiring moments that happened this Black History Month:

Cicely Tyson graced TIME Magazine for their Optimists Issue.

NASA's Independent Verification and Validation Facility is now called the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility, so named for the woman responsible for calculating historic flight trajectories for the first American to go into space, the first American to orbit the earth, AND the flight path for the first human trip to the moon.

Queen Latifah, co-president of BlueSugar Corporation, is building a $14 million housing project in the same city she was born in, Newark, New Jersey.

Cynthia Marshall became the first Black Woman CEO of an NBA Team, the Dallas Mavricks. In an interview, she said “It was 2018. I shouldn’t be the first of anything in 2018.” Later on in the same interview, she dropped the gem “Diversity is being invited to the party, but inclusion is being asked to dance...”

The Obama's helped the National Portrait Gallery smash their vistor records. The Obama portraits, painted by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, who are the first Black artists to be commissioned to paint a presidential couple for the National Portrait Gallery, according to the Washington Post, helped the Gallery had 2.3 million visitors in 2018, about a million more than in 2017.

Chicago is about to have its first Black Mayor in either Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle.

And, because God is a good God, he dropped a historic #OscarsSoBlack where:

• Ruth Carter became the first Black woman to win Oscar for Costume Design on Sunday night for her work on Black Panther.
• Hannah Beachler become the first Black person to win Best Production Design for Black Panther.
• Mahershala Ali became a two-time Academy Award winner, winning the Best Supporting Actor for his turn in Green Book.
• Regina King won her first Oscar on Sunday for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in If Beale Street Could Talk.
• Peter Ramsey became the first Black director to ever win an Oscar for Best Animated Feature for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
• Spike Lee, beloved director won his first-ever and way long overdue Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman, and had the best reaction to winning.

See! February was not all bad. 

Low key, we are going to celebrate all year long anyway.