Before There Was Black History Month, There Was Black August

February gets the flowers. It is the month the schools teach, the brands celebrate, and the country agrees to remember. But there is another Black observance, older in spirit and far less known, and it was not born in a classroom. It was born behind prison walls. It is called Black August, and we are in it right now.

Black August is a month long commemoration of Black political prisoners, freedom fighters, and the long history of Black resistance. It was formally established in 1979 at San Quentin State Prison in California, where a group of incarcerated Black men came together to honor their fallen and to discipline themselves in the process. This year marks the 47th annual observance, and what started inside a cell block has since spread across the country and the world.

At the center of the story are two brothers. Jonathan Jackson was just 17 when, on August 7, 1970, he walked into the Marin County courthouse in an armed attempt to free the Soledad Brothers, taking a judge and others hostage. Within minutes, San Quentin guards opened fire, and Jonathan was killed alongside William Christmas, James McClain, and Judge Harold Haley. His older brother, George Jackson, was already a legend inside. A Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party and author of the bestselling Soledad Brother, George had been sentenced to one year to life in 1960 for allegedly stealing 70 dollars from a gas station, and spent more than a decade inside, much of it in solitary confinement. On August 21, 1971, guards killed him on the yard at San Quentin. He was 29. James Baldwin famously said no Black person would ever believe George Jackson died the way officials claimed.

Out of those deaths, the men inside built a tradition. The first Black August honored George and Jonathan Jackson along with others cut down in the struggle, names like William Christmas, James McClain, W.L. Nolen, and Khatari Gaulden, and it called for the freedom of the political prisoners still behind the walls. They wore black armbands, studied revolutionary literature, turned away from entertainment, and fasted from sunup to sundown.

August was chosen because the calendar is heavy with Black resistance. The first enslaved Africans were brought to the shores of Virginia in August 1619. The Haitian Revolution ignited in August 1791. Nat Turner led his rebellion in August 1831. Marcus Garvey was born on August 17, Fred Hampton on August 30. The March on Washington filled the National Mall on August 28, 1963. Emmett Till was murdered in August 1955, and the Watts uprising erupted in August 1965. The month holds both the wounds and the fight back, and Black August insists we hold both too.

The tradition is defined by discipline rather than celebration, summed up in four words, study, fast, train, fight. Observers commit to a higher level of focus for the month, reading and political education, fasting from food and drink during daylight hours, physical training, and abstaining from drugs, alcohol, and distraction. The point is not to party. The point is to sharpen the mind and body in honor of those who gave everything, and to stay connected to the ongoing work of Black liberation.

Nearly five decades later, Black August has traveled far beyond San Quentin. Artists, organizers, and everyday people now mark it in their own ways, through study circles, community events, mutual aid, and calls to free political prisoners who remain locked up for their activism. It remains, at its core, exactly what those men made it, a refusal to let the freedom fighters be forgotten. February may be the month the country hands us. Black August is the one our people built for themselves.