Like so many aspects of Black life in America, birthdays are often an opportunity to celebrate not only the individual milestones in a person’s life, but also the collective joy, love, and victories experienced by the family and even the entire community. Through the centuries of celebrations, Black people have always found a way to celebrate each other, collectively, under the backdrop of a world, a society, a community not willing to acknowledge the whole beauty of our identity.
For as long as I can remember, in every Black family that I was ever connected with, including my own, I witnessed this sense of freedom and liberated expression that came out most prominently during a birthday celebration. The birthday celebration, no matter the length of time or the location, becomes this transformative moment where you can transcend your vocation, rise above your station, live larger and broader than your title allows, and totally immerse yourself in the full embodiment of freedom. Children clothed in untamed innocence, dignified and decorated members of the community, and elders worn with wisdom all took center stage on their birthday.
Now I grew up in the eighties, and by that time, the birthday celebration in Black life had shifted to take on an even greater meaning. The normal American birthday tradition would start at some point during the birthday celebration-seated or standing, with close family and friends, someone would come from behind the veil of a kitchen with a birthday cake lit and ready to be presented to the birthday celebrant. Everyone would gather around huddled closely, quietly singing the traditional Happy Birthday tune in unison.
But at some point in the ritual, whether towards the end of the traditional song or after the candled wishes are made, everyone would break out in an explosive roar of Stevie Wonder’s tune, singing: “Happy Birthday to Ya! Happy Birthday to Ya!
You could fully recognize a shift in the energy and a shift between the two moods, and the two songs. The shift is always purposely done, as if to say that we as Black people live in two worlds and shift between consciousness-one consciousness that we’ve learned to understand and another higher consciousness where we are understood. And it is in that higher consciousness, at the height of song and dance, love and laughter, redemption and reflection that we embody on our birthdays, the last words spoken by Dr.
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It’s tradition to sing “Happy Birthday” when celebrating a friend or family member’s entrance into the world. But for many black people, the familiar birthday song alone just won’t do. When serenading the guest of honor, they sing something completely different, a birthday song with a groove, while clapping and swaying side to side rapturously.
Yes, the black “Happy Birthday” is real. Black people (me and my entire family, for instance) have been singing it at birthday parties for decades. Like the black Wizard of Oz, the black American national anthem, and the black Clark Gable, it’s infinitely cooler and more soulful than the white thing that may have inspired it.
Stevie Wonder gave us an anthem to celebrate, not only Dr. King’s beauty and his spirit, but the singer/songwriter gave Black America another conduit to collectively celebrate ourselves each year on our own birthdays. We had permission to fully clothe ourselves in the dignity of Dr. King’s dream.
A poll I sent to friends and co-workers confirmed I’m not the only one. Most of the white people who responded had never heard of Stevie’s “Happy Birthday,” but even the black respondents were mostly in the dark about the song’s origins. Regardless of their race, a good portion of respondents who were familiar with the song agreed that it’s the better birthday song. This is clearly true, since the traditional “Happy Birthday” isn’t even celebratory; it’s a staid musical obligation in the bleak face of aging. Stevie’s “Happy Birthday,” on the other hand, is joyful and raucous. It’s also incredibly corny.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that Stevie wrote it and that its chorus is still a signifier of kinship for so many black people. “No matter where the song is started,” one respondent to my poll wrote, “if someone else starts singing it, all black people in the vicinity join-whether they know the birthday boy/girl or not. It’s wonderful.” The fact that there are some nonblack folks who have been exposed to it is also great. If it’s one thing about Black folks, we know how to party!
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Respondents mentioned having witnessed impromptu singing in Harlem, South Africa, and Seychelles. Many of the white people I polled who were familiar with the song had encountered it not in a party setting but in an educational one: as a middle-schooler with a black principal; using it to warm up with a college a cappella group; while teaching at Chicago public schools.
A bit of background: The synth-heavy track closed Wonder’s 1981 album Hotter Than July, but its origins lie more than a decade earlier, as detailed in a fascinating history of the song from Mark Baram at Medium. Within days of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, black Congressman John Conyers introduced a bill to make the slain activist’s birthday a national holiday. He also composed a new version of “Happy Birthday” in MLK’s honor.
Since the 1970s, many Americans had been campaigning for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday to become a national holiday. Several states enacted holidays on his birthday in the 70’s, including Illinois, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, but Congress stopped short of passing a national day into law. In November 1979, despite the endorsement of President Carter, the King Holiday Bill was defeated by five votes.
But then something incredible happened that changed everything. The superstar Stevie Wonder stepped in and changed the national consciousness about the importance of Dr. After the 1979 defeat of the bill, Wonder wrote “Happy Birthday” and included it on his “Hotter Than July” album of 1980. He held the Rally for Peace press conference in 1981, when the song was released as a single. His song became the anthem for the movement to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday and, in late 1983, President Ronald Reagan approved the holiday, to be observed on the third Monday in January each year.
The campaign to get the holiday federally acknowledged seemed to be doomed as the decade changed. It looked as if the American sense of justice and freedom was too bruised and tattered from the riots and uprisings in American cities following the assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968.
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Thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of Wonder, Conyers, and many others, King is now commemorated nationwide every third Monday in January. Yet the origins of Wonder’s ode have faded from memory. I grew up in a household where Wonder’s music was in constant rotation, but “Happy Birthday” was, for me, not Stevie’s thing but our family’s thing and then, later, a black thing.
Another thing: While African American history and culture is rarely honored, Black folks have taken it upon themselves to not only honor the legacy of slavery but also Black contributions to the arts and more. From Black Love Day all the way to Jerry Rescue Day, Black celebrations outside of Black History Month and Frederick Douglass Day should be marked on your calendar for this year and beyond.
Stevie Wonder Helped MLK Day Be Possible! | #HistoryOf
Here are some examples of Black celebrations outside of Black History Month:
- Black Love Day (February 13): They say Valentine’s Day is for lovers, but February 13 is for Black love! Founded in 1993 by Washington, D.C. native Ayo Handy-Kendi, Black Love Day is a holiday meant to celebrate all types of love in the Black community, according to the New York Times.
- Rosa Parks Day (February 4 in Missouri and Massachusetts; first Monday after her birthday in Michigan and California): The legacy of civil rights leader Rosa Parks is one of the most celebrated and widely recognized across the world. Because of this, several states have different days in which they celebrate Parks.
- Emancipation Day (April 16): In 1862, Congress passed the Compensated Emancipation Act ending all chattel slavery in the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. Then-President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law on April 16 of that same year. With that, more than 3,000 enslaved people were granted permanent freedom, marking the first Emancipation Day.
- Jackie Robinson Day (April 15): On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson debuted in the MLB, breaking the long-held color barrier in professional baseball. In 1997, after Robinson’s death in 1972, the MLB retired his number 42 across all major league teams. In 2004, the organization formally recognized April 15 as Jackie Robinson day.
- Junkanoo (December 26): While the rest of the world celebrates Christmas with ornate trees and family dinner, in the Bahamas, Junkanoo is celebrated on Boxing Day- the day after Christmas- with a huge festival filled with parades, great food, and community.
- African-American Music Appreciation Month (June): What better way to welcome the summer weather than with African-American Music Appreciation Month? For the entire month of June, Black Americans’ contributions to music, including that of jazz, hip-hop, r&b, and country, are all celebrated in various ways.
- Marcus Garvey's Birthday (August 17): Aug. 17 marks the day Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey was born. Often regarded as a controversial figure in history, Garvey was key in making the “back to Africa” movement mainstream. He also created the Black Star Line which was a Black owned passenger line meant to carry Black people to and from the African continent, according to BBC. Today, people in Jamaica remember his birthday to celebrate the life and legacy of the activist.
- Malcolm X Day (May 19): On May 19, 1925, American civil rights leader and activist Malcom X was born in Nebraska. In 2024, the Nebraska Legislature passed a bill recognized his birthday as a day of remembrance, according to KETV.
- Black Poetry Day (October 17): Oct. 17 is largely recognized as Black Poetry Day, honoring the contributions of Black poets and writers throughout American history. The holiday celebrates the likes of James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Amanda Gorman and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
- Jerry Rescue Day (October): According to the Daily Orange, William “Jerry” Henry was an enslaved Black man who fled to Syracuse, N.Y. after his escape from slavery. In 1851, Henry was captured in Syracuse, but when local residents got news of his arrest, they banded together to break Henry out of jail. “It was not only an act of resistance but also an act of hope, of the world they were hoping to come,” Rev. Dr. Eric Jackson, acting NAACP Syracuse branch president and a local pastor, told the news outlet. Almost 174 years later, we celebrate Oct.
- Harriet Tubman Day (March 10): As a consequence of chattel slavery, Tubman’s birthday is unknown, but the abolitionist and American hero died on March 10, 1913- which we now know as Harriet Tubman Day.
- Black Cowboy Festival (May): This May, the Black Cowboy Festival will make its return for the 28th year. The festival, founded by S.C. natives Mark And Sandra Myers, was created to pay tribute to an integral part of American history that often gets overshadowed: the history of the Black cowboy.
- Crispus Attucks Day (March 5): March 5 marks “Crispus Attucks Day,” a holiday to remember Crispus Attucks, a Black man killed in the Boston Massacre of 1770.
- Maya Angelou's Birthday (April 4): Known for her 1969 memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou was also a civil rights activist and a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Angelou was a close friend to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and his wife, Coretta Scott King, and after his assassination in 1968, Angelou stopped celebrating her birthday, April 4, in remembrance of King. According to Wake Forest University, she and Coretta Scott would sent one another flowers on April 4. In Winston-Salem, N.C., Mayor Allen Joines declared Angelou’s birthday “The Dr.
- Celebrating the Dashiki (October 30): If you need another reason to pull out your best dashiki, use Oct. 30 to do so! On that day, many celebrate the rich history of the African garment and how Black Americans adapted it to our history.
