On Sustaining Collaborative Partnerships

By Zebulon Miletsky, PhD

Considering this year’s theme of “Care and Cooperation: Partnerships that Work” leads me to meditate on my own methods to sustains collaboration—and our larger effort to create such a thing at the national level. The first, of course is trust. It becomes critical to build relationships in which trust is a cornerstone. This part can sometimes take time, because trust is so hard to build. For example, many if us have tried to maintain trust in the current Presidential administration. Giving it a chance. Trying to have respect for the office. But as we can see, when trust is broken, it becomes very hard to maintain coordination of stable collaborative partnerships. I would like to use as just one example, the building up of Black History month and the movement to maintain “collaborative partnerships” within that—with the president, with the congress, and with the American people.

Many citizens have been disappointed to see the effort to erase African America accomplishments. But this current effort to erase our history and contribution is nothing new. It has been happening on an ongoing basis since the birth of humanity. It was happening when the face of the sphinx was changed in Egypt. It happens in Western Civilization textbooks that start only in Rome and Greece, and make no mention that Southern Spain was ruled for 800 years by the Moors. The attempt to erase our contribution was always afoot. I believe that was the reason why Dr. Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week in 1926, in the first place. They told us we had no history—no great men, no great women, no great accomplishments, nothing worthy of note—even though roughly 75% of the world’s population are people of color. So this fight continues.

Dr. Woodson largely believed that there may come a day when Black History Month were no long needed—when American history would make room for the Black Experience, and correct the narrative. It would pain me to have to tell the good Doctor that he was overly optimistic about that in 2026. And that now, one hundred years later, we are fighting to save the historical markers—which are so important—and vital. Because not all history is in books. We’re apparently passed the book banning stage. Sometimes, like the sphinx, the effort to erase, becomes more notable for what that effort attempted to do, which is to make sure that no young Black girl or boy ever connects the greatness of something like Egypt and themselves. And so it becomes important to try to eradicate that history. There is a deeper and harder to face truth—and this should be a lesson for our young people—which is that there is someone—some force—that does not want you to know this. Because to know it would be to acknowledge a larger truth about the origins of humanity, and the African and Black role in it.

So, we are celebrating 100 years of doing that. We thank Dr. Woodson for giving us this gift and tool, to continue the fight. Well, it is strange on the one hand isn’t it… to have the March 2025 executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”— upon which is the executive order that much of the more recent historical exhibits have been removed. It seems to contradict this year’s Black History month proclamation. Where the President says, “black history is not distinct from American history, rather, the history of black Americans is an indispensable chapter in our grand American story.” It makes you wonder if he actually reads these things. But, I think it also speaks to the absolute rock solid-nature and moreover ironclad legality of Black History Month. That these two things could exist side by side only speaks to that reality. And so we are strong after 100 years. And now it becomes more a matter of interpretation, of Black History. Not the existence of Black History itself.

So we find ourselves in this situation. And on sustaining collaborative partnerships, we find ourselves in this struggle as we deal with a government which has given us conflicting claims. So, we must be clear that Black institutions, who were either created by us or for us, need protecting. There would be no way to do this without sustaining the collaborative partnerships which were built in the past, and never giving up the fight for freedom which was bought and purchased by the blood of the ancestors. The abolitionists of old had to sustain collaborative partnerships. The civil rights movement did, and even the Black Power movement valued this critical approach of care, sustainability and intimately—love—to sustain the collaborative partnerships which we now use to protect our history, and point toward a brighter future.