More than simply celebrating the resilience, evolution and achievements of our past, Black History Month stands as a warning about what happens when power goes unchecked – and a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifice and courage it takes to push a country towards the realization of its own ideals.

In this moment, we are watching officials weaponize fear and exaggerate divisions in order to concentrate government power in the hands of a few. We are watching protests being treated as a threat instead of a constitutional right. We are watching immigrant communities targeted with cruelty while abuse and dehumanization are normalized. And we are watching violence being waged against Americans and rights infringed in a way that should disturb every person who believes the Constitution and democracy are supposed to mean something.

We have been here before.

My commitment to justice is not theoretical. It is my inheritance.

My father worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He fought for voting rights at a time when it could cost you your job, your home, your freedom – and your life. After the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four little girls in Birmingham, he moved to Alabama not to retreat from danger, but to confront injustice directly. After the state-sponsored murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson, he initiated the Selma to Montgomery marches that ushered in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That history is not distant to me. It is instruction.

And this February, I want to share some lessons from Black history that are directly relevant to the moment we are living through right now.

Progress Requires Disruption.

Disruption is not the threat. The injustice is.

And when people are punished for protesting, it is not because protest is the problem – it is because protest reveals what those in power want hidden.

Local Struggles Shape National Change.

This is the part of the movement people romanticize, but rarely sit with honestly.

Freedom has always been built by ordinary people showing up anyway. Not because it was easy. Not because it was safe. But because the alternative was unacceptable.

Democracy Must Be Defended Constantly.

Democracy does not survive on its own. It survives because people refuse to surrender it. Or said another way, democracy is not taken; it is given away silently, incrementally.

That is what my father understood. It is what the ordinary people who became the extraordinary foot soldiers of the movement understood. And it is what we must understand now – especially in Florida, where we have seen a relentless barrage of laws designed to silence, punish, and exclude.

Justice Is Indivisible.

Justice cannot be defended in pieces.

If we only speak when we are directly harmed, we will always be responding too late – because the systems that target one community do not stop there. They grow. They expand. They test the limits of what people will tolerate.

Black history teaches us that the fight for freedom has always been connected – and it has always been costly.

But it also teaches us this: progress is possible. Not because cruelty disappears, but because people decide it will not win.

That is what Black History Month demands of us: not admiration, but action. Not comfort, but courage.

And that is exactly what the ACLU of Florida will continue to practice – in courtrooms, in communities, and alongside the people most impacted by the abuses of power we are seeing right now.

Because this moment does not call for quiet concern.

It calls for courage and defense – of dignity, democracy, and the Constitution itself.

In solidarity,
Bacardi L. Jackson
Executive Director, ACLU of Florida