The Title

The title of this website, The Black Names Project: Celebrating African-American Names, reflects the author's goals, several preferences within the African-American community, and the mood of the nation since the end of 2016.

First, the author's goals are twofold: (1) that this project will continue for many years as a growing repository of names and people from the African-American community and (2) that people within and outside the African-American community will come to this place to celebrate African-American names, people, history, and contributions to American life and culture and, in doing so, will contribute to the effort to end racism in the United States.

Second, from within the African-American community, the debate continues regarding terminology. Thus, the title reflects the use of both "Black" and "African-American."

Third, the mood of the nation from the end of 2016 to the beginning of 2021 was dismal, with deep sadness at having a remarkable president leave his term of office to be replaced by a president whose agenda was filled with racism, with the Black Lives Matter movement struggling to be heard and taken seriously, with tensions increasing in many communities, and with many who teethed their social activism on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., feeling as if they were back in the 1960s. Thus, The Black Names Project portion of the title reflects the seriousness of the matters at hand, while the Celebrating African-American Names portion reflects the accomplishments, the love, the caring, the hope, and the celebration of those lives that will overcome the difficulties of this time in our nation's history.

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