By Dr Yetunde Kolajo
Happy Black History Month 2025. Every culture’s history merits celebration—an honest accolade to integrity, ingenuity, and the resilience of communities across generations.
This Black History Month 2025 highlights the nurse diligently stabilising a ward, the veteran who never told his story, the graduate teaching far from home, the market women keeping families afloat, the list is endless. Their courage is often quiet, their influence subtle yet cumulative, and their legacy is undeniably significant and measurable. In cotton fields, markets, classrooms, playgrounds, bathrooms, kitchens, clinics, laboratories, local councils, politics, and even the White House, the contributions of Black individuals have long been the binding force that holds us together.
Our task in higher education is simple and serious: teach it, name it, fund it, and continue it so that dignity becomes an active policy, rather than a concept relegated to the shelves of piled reports, and power becomes care.
Quiet Courage names a way of being that many Black men and women have carried for generations: showing up, skill in hand, conscience engaged, and community at heart, especially when no one is watching. From farmers, doctors, midwives and nurses to teachers, market leaders, chaplains, and civil servants, this is character forged in service: disciplined competence, integrity under pressure, and a commitment to leave places better than we found them. Like in Nigerian heritage, culturally rooted values such as ọmọlúàbí (character and duty) and igwebuike (strength-in-community) translate into everyday habits: doing meticulous work, sharing credit, and training the next pair of hands. These habits are not just “Black excellence”; they are human virtues our society needs models for leaders who choose stewardship over spotlight, accountability over applause, and legacy over likes. Universities can cultivate this by assessing contribution (not just performance), rewarding mentorship, embedding community service in curricula, and resourcing the people who quietly hold institutions together.
BHM2025 #Quiet Courage by Dr Yetunde Kolajo