Actor Morgan Freeman reignited debate over whether Black History Month is necessary when he called the observance "ridiculous" on national television.

"You're going to relegate my history to a month?" Freeman asked in an interview broadcast on "60 Minutes" in December. "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history."

Some African Americans agree that the observance belittles black history. But most prominent African Americans and historians say Freeman's thinking is wishful -- the reality is that black history isn't being taught and that trumpeting it, even for the shortest month of the year, is the best alternative.

"Without Black History Month, we wouldn't think about our history at all," said Tony Muhammad, a Nation of Islam minister in Los Angeles who does about 80 speaking engagements about black history from Kwanzaa through February each year. "Every culture needs its identity. We should better use the month to tell the truth of our history and what black people have given to the world ... instead of leaving it to the Europeans."

Black History Month began as Negro History Week in 1926. Historian Carter G. Woodson picked the second week of February to mark the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and iconic abolitionist, orator and former slave Frederick Douglass. In 1976, after supporters lobbied federal officials, the week was expanded to the entire month during the nation's bicentennial celebration.

Woodson didn't expect the celebration to last forever.

"He thought that as a result of bringing attention to contributions, publishers would realize they were missing a great piece and rewrite history to include the contributions of African Americans," said Sylvia Cyrus-Albritton, who leads the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which Woodson started 91 years ago.

"We should be further along. Our children are struggling in too many venues because they don't know they are standing on the shoulders of people who have fought hard," she said. "I don't think there will ever be a time when we should not celebrate."

Sarah Willie, an associate professor of sociology at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, agrees with Freeman that black history -- and the histories of all races -- should be taught all through the year.

"It was certainly a good starting place, but it is absurd to reduce any particular group's history to one month of motivational speeches," Willie said. "We need more history during more of the year, and we need to think critically about the role that race has played in American history."

Willie said she and other academics have jokingly dubbed the observance Black Hysterical Month because they are asked to speak in so many venues.

"Everyone is calling: the church, the schools, the professional groups," she said. "Some people say no just for their own sanity. Others decide to make a statement by not speaking in February."

Muhammad, who speaks in schools across the nation, says that what he sees during his lectures proves that Black History Month is vital. When he shows photos, students easily recognize Santa Claus and Jesus. Most know George Washington and even yell out that he was the first president.

But when he held up a photo of Douglass during a recent visit to Tom Bradley Elementary School in Los Angeles, he was disheartened by the response.

"The black children had no idea who he was, and a few white kids thought it was Uncle Ben," the image on rice boxes, he said. "Why don't they know this?"

At George Washington Carver Elementary School in the Hunters Point neighborhood, most students do know. Their principal, Emily Wade-Thompson, dresses as a different famous African American each day in February and hands out literature about the historical figures.

"We incorporate black history into our daily program," Wade-Thompson said. "We even use Swahili words to talk to children about their behavior."

Many teachers at Carver Elementary teach black history all year: History classes study the Underground Railroad, music classes learn the Negro National Anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing," and a black inventors' bulletin board highlights African American contributions plus a monthlong lesson on Carver, the inventor, each September.

Dorothy Tsuruta, chairwoman of the Black Studies Department at San Francisco State, applauds Black History Month for not only teaching history to children but instilling pride in college students and other adults.

"Anyone who wants to get rid of the month should spend a day on a state campus and see how proud the students are when they see the posters, hear the speeches, when they look in the book store and see black authors on display," she said. "When they see it all over the place, their appetite is whetted for more study. It is so very seldom that black success is paraded all over the country, a whole month of nonstop information."

Some critics say Black History Month has become shallow, a dull commercial holiday celebrated by using Langston Hughes stamps, eating soul food and visiting the African American museum. In short, it has failed, they say.

"All these people try to pretend they care, but it is make-believe," 25-year-old Lori Taylor of Hayward said during a recent visit to the new Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. "I see these blues CDs for sale at McDonald's with a Black History Month sign, and it just makes me mad."

But the corporate recognition has been effective in making black history part of American culture, said Nell Irvin Painter, professor emeritus of history at Princeton University.

"America has generally become more aware of African American history in the last generation or so," she said. "Part of that has to do with the corporate embrace."

Gina Thompson, who teaches world history to seventh-graders at Piedmont Middle School, said she is not a fan of Black History Month because it is so limited.

"It puts our accomplishments in little boxes as opposed to an overall part of the curriculum," Thompson said. "I think it is valuable, but I wish it didn't have to be. It's kind of a necessary evil."

Michael Chappie Grice, co-chairman of the education committee for the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, said every month can be Black History Month if parents make it happen.

"I encourage parents to get ahold of a calendar with birthdays of all the icons and go to events throughout the year instead of always leaving it up to the schools," Grice said.

Some black leaders, like San Francisco County Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, appear at as many engagements as possible in February, saying the observance is extremely important.

"Racism hits us in the face every single day of our lives; it is still alive and well in America and San Francisco," Maxwell said. "Our children see and deal with so much negative stuff, Black History Month gives them something positive to make reference to.

"To say we should get rid of it is like saying we should forget the Holocaust."