One hundred years ago, when the historian Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week, he hoped the celebration would combat racial prejudice, which, he said, “is merely the logical result of tradition, the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind.”

Negro History Week was expanded to Black History Month in 1976, and a half-century later, the commemoration is as necessary as ever. Jarvis R. Givens states the case powerfully in his latest book, I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month (Harper/HarperCollins, Feb. 3). The Harvard scholar writes, “This milestone presents an opportunity to reflect on the black historical tradition, a critically important task given the current political conflicts pertaining to what can and cannot be taught about race and history in American schools and colleges or engaged in public spaces.”

One of several new books that unearths overlooked Black history is Cheryl W. Thompson’s Forgotten Souls: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen (Dafina/Kensington, Jan. 27). Of the men who signed up for the Tuskegee Army Flying School were 27 pilots who went missing during World War II. Thompson writes that the military, in one family member’s words, “intentionally equipped the young, inexperienced Black pilots, like her dad, with less than stellar aircraft because the men weren’t wanted as pilots…to begin with.”

Over time, Black people made strides in the armed forces, but true equality was hardly achieved. In The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home (Knopf, Feb. 10), Wil Haygood writes of how “Blacks were disproportionately being sent to the front of the battle lines in Vietnam.” One Black major who dared challenge the state of affairs—calling the U.S. military services “the strongest citadels of racism on the face of the earth”—was removed from his command. Our reviewer calls the book “a searing history of the Black experience in Vietnam.”

A longtime journalist like Haygood, Eugene Robinson delves into Black history—his own—in Freedom Lost, Freedom Won: A Personal History of America (Simon & Schuster, Feb. 3). What he discovers, our critic wrote, is “the central truth of African American history: that for every advance toward being seen as truly American, ‘in short order, that full citizenship would be revoked.’”

There are some uplifting discoveries. In It’s No Wonder: The Life and Times of Motown’s Legendary Songwriter Sylvia Moy (Da Capo, Feb. 10), Margena A. Christian chronicles the life of a singer who was recognized for her achievements late in life. Our review sums it up as “a heart-tugging tale of brilliance finally rewarded.”

A literal discovery was made in 2017, when an archivist found a short film from 1898 of a Black couple kissing. As Allyson Nadia Field writes in Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History (Univ. of California, Feb. 17), the couple’s tenderness was “incongruous with the stereotypes, racist tropes, and comedic ridicule that tend to characterize early cinema’s portrayal of Black people.” It’s a good book for Black History Month and, as it turns out, for Valentine’s Day.

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.