Morgan Freeman was 68 years old and had only been holding his first Oscar, for ‘Million Dollar Baby’, for a few months. Even so, in December 2005 he sat down with Mike Wallace on ’60 Minutes’ and said something that still makes many people uncomfortable.
On Black History Month, Freeman was direct: the idea seems “ridiculous” to him. “Are you going to relegate my history to one month?”, he asked. “I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.” And he added an argument that many still cite today: there is no White History Month.
When Wallace asked him how racism could then be ended, his answer was four words: stop talking about it. Freeman believes the labels “Black” and “white” are an obstacle, and suggested that people stop calling someone a “white man” so no one calls him a “Black man”.
The month he criticized began in 1926, when historian Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week, and he himself hoped that one day it would no longer be needed. Does Freeman have a point, or does Black history still need a space of its own?