The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that encompassed the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In the middle of Black History Month this year, U.S. Representative Allen West of Florida gave a brief history of Republicans and Blacks from the post-Civil War period to the present:
go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you;
may your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
--Samuel Adams