NAACP and Black History Month

Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Thomas raises an issue worthy of discussion concerning the purpose and existence of the NAACP and Black History Month:

"We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history," he said in 1926. "What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race, hate and religious prejudice."

If ever there was a month when African-American history was significant, it is this one. Abraham Lincoln—You remember "the Great Emancipator"?—was born 200 years ago on Feb. 12. A hundred years later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, was born on Lincoln's birthday. A century later we have our first biracial president. What a country.

Which raises a question I've pondered increasingly in recent years about the NAACP and Black History Month. If they weren't around, would anyone notice?

A lot of people ask, now that Americans of all colors have put an African-American in the White House, how much more "advancement" do we need?