By Chelsea Lenora Small
The Forward Times
https://www.forwardtimes.com/
February 2026 marks 100 years since the first national observance of Black history. A century.
For 50 years, what began as Negro History Week lived in the places we gathered, classrooms and sanctuaries, front porches and living rooms. When the observance expanded into Black History Month, it carried that same spirit for the next 50 years, sustained by the people who understood, instinctively and intentionally, that our stories were our strength.
That is a full century of remembering, teaching, celebrating, and passing it on.
And if I am honest, sitting with that truth has been heavy.
This year’s Black History Month Special Edition is themed “Still [RIGHT]ing History.” We chose that theme because we are living in a moment where truth is being challenged, restricted, and reshaped in real time. Books are being banned. Curricula are being sanitized. Language is being policed. Entire histories are being reduced to footnotes or framed as threats. In this climate, remembrance is not passive. It is active. It is urgent.
So, our team did what Forward Times has always done. We went to the archives.
And in those pages, I felt everything at once.
I was in awe. In awe of being connected to something so raw, so fearless, so undeniably Black. Pride came first. Then grief began to press against my chest as I read about what our people endured simply for insisting on the right to exist, to vote, to learn, to walk freely, to thrive. Beneath that grief was anger at systems built on our backs, designed in ways that were never meant to reward our brilliance, no matter how undeniable we are.
I felt something else too. A sense of responsibility that is hard to explain unless you have inherited a legacy you did not ask for, but love enough to protect.
I never met my grandfather, Julius P. Carter, the founder of this institution we call Forward Times. He died twenty years before I was born, long before I could sit at his feet and ask him about the risks he took or the battles he chose. I call Forward Times an institution because it is not just a publication. It is a body of memory. A living archive. A witness.
Sometimes it is fascinating, and yes, it can also be painful, that I am so engulfed in his vision without ever hearing his voice in the way a granddaughter should. I cannot ask him what he was thinking as certain issues ripped through our community and ricocheted like bullets. I cannot ask him how he held steady when the truth made enemies.
But I do have his words. I do have his life’s work. And I have the evidence of what Forward Times has been for 66 of these 100 years.
He started with a simple dream: “Houston needs a positive Negro newspaper and I think I’m going to start one.” It was 1960, the height of the Civil Rights Movement. You can imagine what it meant to see Black people centered with dignity in print. Positive stories alongside hard truths, “without fear or favor,” even when the truth made people uncomfortable.
This edition explores protest as a tool for preservation, progress, and power. When we say protest, we are talking about something much broader than a single act. The archives reminded me that movements have always required many roles. Economic boycotts and sit-ins. Legal strategy and church organizing. Mutual aid and political education. Media accountability. Digital organizing. Even rest, at times, as resistance.
Protest is not only what happens in the streets. It also happens on the page, in what we choose to print and refuse to erase. Ink has shaped outcomes, moved policy, and preserved truth when other tools failed.
That is why this edition is grounded in our archives and responsive to the moment we are living in now. Forward Times is positioning itself, intentionally, as both a voice of reassurance and a trusted resource. A beacon of truth and hope. Not because we want to sound inspirational, but because we understand what happens when a community is deprived of truth. Confusion becomes a tactic. Silence becomes a weapon. Erasure becomes policy.
When I searched the archives, I found words that felt like they could have been written today.
In April 1968, in a Forward Times clipping titled “Examination of the Legacy,” the paper reflected on the nation after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and posed a question that still haunts and guides us: “After all of the mourning and the rhetoric, after all of the burning and the looting, what will we do with the legacy that we have inherited?” That piece insisted that reflection alone would never be enough. It called for direction, discipline, unity, hope, confidence, courage, and strength. It reminded readers of Dr. King’s warning: “Let no man drag you so low as to hate.”
That line has been sitting with me.
Because anger is real. It is righteous. It is understandable. Many of us are tired. Tired of watching the same patterns repeat. Tired of watching grief become a headline cycle. Tired of being asked to perform pain and then return to normal.
I think of George Floyd, a Houstonian and a Jack Yates High School graduate, who deserved so much more than to be left begging for breath. I think about how quickly corporations can promise change, and how quickly those promises can be rolled back when the moment is no longer trending. I think about how often our humanity is negotiated as if it were optional.
And I think about the danger Black journalists and Black media have always faced.
Forward Times was bombed weeks shy of its 11th anniversary, shortly after publishing a story that was critical of the Houston Police Department. In January 1971, as the paper went to press, an editorial titled “We Shall Not Be Moved” declared, “WE GO TO PRESS this week, the stench of gunpowder from a homemade bomb is still in the air around the plant of FORWARD TIMES.” It refused attempts to label, discredit, or silence this institution. It stated plainly, “NOW LET IT BE KNOWN TO ALL PEOPLE that FORWARD TIMES is a Black Newspaper serving Houston’s Black community.” And it ended with a vow that still reads like a mission statement: “WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED.”
Just days later, my grandfather suffered a massive heart attack and died four days after the bombing. The stress of the attack and its aftermath had taken its toll. He did not live to see the full expansion of the vision he fought to protect.
A week after his passing, another archive entry carried a title that felt like both a prophecy and a charge: “We Walk and Work in the Shadow of a Giant.” It described Julius Carter as a man of vision, wisdom, strength, and compassion, a soldier who fought for his people without bitterness, and someone who believed in building. It quoted him directly: “LET US BUILD AN IDENTITY and an image. Not against the white community, but with each other.”
Those words matter right now.
Because the system is built to absorb outrage. It can outlast a news cycle. It can monetize our grief. It can reduce our resistance to a moment, a clip, a hashtag, and then proceed as usual. That is part of what leaves people feeling helpless.
So, what do we do?
We begin where Forward Times has always begun. With clarity. With community. With record-keeping that refuses to be erased. With organizing our lives around what is true.
We will keep showing up as a trusted resource. We will keep publishing the truth. We will keep telling the stories that hold the line between history and erasure.
And we will keep reminding our readers of something this institution has known for over 66 years: that progress is not only made by those who hold power. It is made by people who withdraw their consent from lies. People who choose discipline over despair. People who build, even when building is slow.
This is what “Still [RIGHT]ing History” means to me.
It means we are not waiting for someone else to validate our worth. We are not waiting for permission to tell the truth. We are not waiting for recognition to define liberation. We are committed to preserving the record, uplifting our community, and informing, inspiring, and empowering our readers with the facts of life, the full story, and the legacy we have inherited.
Forward Times exists because a man named Julius P. Carter believed Houston needed a positive Negro newspaper. It exists because a 29-year-old widow named Lenora “Doll” Carter refused to let the dream die. It exists because our community kept picking it up, kept reading, kept believing that our stories mattered.
Now, 66 years into our 100-year commemoration of Black history, I feel the weight of this moment. I also feel the responsibility of it. And I feel the hope in it.
Because we are still here. Still writing. Still righting. Still refusing to be moved.
From this time forward.
Chelsea Lenora Small is Associate Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Forward Times, continuing the legacy of her grandfather, founder Julius P. Carter.
