It ought to go without saying that black history is American history. For evidence of this, you needn’t look further than the country’s native forms of music, art and dance, its literary and scientific achievements, or, most tellingly, the occupant of its highest elected office.

But still, every February, at schools and community centers around the country, people come together to celebrate and honor the contributions of black Americans that stretch from the dawning administration of President Barack Obama back to what he called the nation’s “original sin of slavery.”

There have been some in recent years who have questioned the continued usefulness of Black History Month. In a 2005 interview on “60 Minutes,” the actor Morgan Freeman called the occasion a “ridiculous” attempt to relegate black history to a single month of the year when indeed it should be incorporated into the larger narrative of the American experience at large.

But for many, each February is an opportunity not to relegate but to educate and celebrate. And this year, at the outset of an administration few thought possible as little as two years ago, this particular month takes on a special gravity and significance. In his landmark speech on race last March, Obama said that understanding the complex picture of race in America “requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point.” He continued: “As William Faulkner once wrote, ‘The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.’ ”

For Celeste Lawson, director of the Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County, the yearly reminder that comes every February is still vital, and especially so this year.

“I wish there wasn’t a need to have a Black History Month,” Lawson said. “But we have far too many people, both black and white, that really are not aware of the extensive list and quality of contributions that black people have made to the United States and to the world in general.”

In Western New York, a series of events — some planned with Black History Month in mind, some not — are on tap to demonstrate the range and quality of some of those contributions, especially where the arts and culture are concerned. Here are a few highlights.

“Along This Way: Storytelling in the African Tradition"

Frank E. Merriweather Library, 1324 Jefferson Ave. 883-4418 Feb. 7

Getting a story straight, as any journalist on deadline will tell you, is no simple task. But putting it in the right order, perfecting its details and finally making it sing out loud is another tale entirely. There are some gifted souls for whom telling stories comes exceedingly naturally. One is Karima Amin, a local educator and children’s book author who will participate in this event sponsored by the Just Buffalo Literary Center.

Joining her will be Sharon Holley, another experienced storyteller and a member, with Amin, of Spin-a-Story-Tellers of Western New York. Sowande Eddie Nicholson, a percussionist and vocalist, and local actor and singer Joyce Carolyn will provide musical accompaniment — and maybe a few stories of their own.

Donna Brazile

33rd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Event University at Buffalo Center for the Arts, UB North Campus, Amherst 645-2787 or www.ubcfa.org Feb. 12

Like Barack Obama, the Democratic strategist, commentator, author and flat-out firebrand Donna Brazile owes a fair share of her success to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Brazile’s political career began at age 9, according to her memoir “Cooking With Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics,” when the assassination of King prompted her to start campaigning for a local candidate who had promised to build a playground in her neighborhood. Later, in 1981, she was the student coordinator for the committee that successfully lobbied to make King’s birthday a national holiday.

Her appearance as part of the University at Buffalo’s Distinguished Speakers Series on Feb. 12 comes at a time when people are seeking wisdom about the radically shifting political outlook under the Obama administration.

Brazile is also known, among other things, for becoming the first black woman to run a presidential campaign (Al Gore’s) in 1999 and, less spectacularly, for being fired from the campaign of Michael Dukakis for essentially suggesting that George H. W. Bush had cheated on his wife. But if there is one thing Brazile is known for more than anything else, it is speaking her mind.

“Kara Walker: The Emancipation Approximation”

Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University 286-8200 or niagara.edu/cam Feb. 15 to May 31.

As artistic commentaries on American slavery go (and they go pretty far), you could scarcely get more gut-wrenching than the 27 silk-screen prints in Kara Walker’s “Emancipation Approximation.”

Walker’s work has been praised far and wide for its unflinching, highly stylized treatment of the 18th and 19th century black experience. It has also been criticized for its grotesque, violent and thoroughly disturbing nature. The somewhat divisive and patently unnerving quality of Walker’s multidisciplinary work has become a catalyst for countless conversations about black history in United States, the stereotypes it spawned and the long shadow it continues to cast.

The prints that will go on view at the Castellani Art Musuem on Feb. 16 come from the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which owns one of 20 editions of Walker’s 2000 piece. It was originally exhibited at the 1999 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, for which an accompanying essay said that Walker’s work “functions like psychological inkblots to engage feelings about the entire history of race relations — the artist’s, our own, and the nation’s.”

In “Emancipation Approximation,” Walker uses silhouettes — a form she compares to working in stereotypes — to render images alternately violent, and confusing in a masterfully executed Victorian style. Her characters, sometimes obscured under globs of bird excrement, sometimes clutching instruments of violence, are meant to test our assumptions about Antebellum America. The work is not easy or pleasant in the least, but then neither, Walker seems to say, was the history that inspired it.

“Freedom Crossing”

The Castellani Art Museum also contains a permanent exhibition dedicated to Western New York’s vital role in the history of the Underground Railroad, which spirited some 30,000 slaves out of the United States and into Canada in the early to mid-1800s. Slaves passed across suspension bridges in Black Rock and Niagara Falls, took boats from Youngstown and Lewiston, or, in some cases, swam.

The exhibition contains photographs, letters, video stations and educational information about Wetern New York’s contribution to the famous network.

“Gem of the Ocean” by August Wilson

Paul Robeson Theatre, 350 Masten Ave. 884-2013 Feb. 13 to March 8

High up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh sits Aunt Ester Tyler, a 285-year-old former slave who, as you might expect from her age, has been through more than her share of hard times. She is the central character and moral compass of August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean,” the work that marks the chronological beginning of the famed black playwright’s “Century Cycle.”

A production of the play, one of the last Wilson wrote before his death in 2005, opens on Feb. 13 at the Paul Robeson Theatre, which is housed in Buffalo’s African-American Cultural Center. Wilson began his cycle of 10 plays — all but one of which takes place in his native Pittsburgh — in 1979. He peopled it with characters like Ester, the possessed Harold Loomis (“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”) and the forlorn patriarch Troy Maxon (“Fences”). Taken as a whole, Wilson’s cycle presents a mythical, often evangelical look at the entire history of the black experience in America with a focus on the 20th century.

In “Gem of the Ocean,” we meet Citizen Barlow, who has escaped from the oppressive living and working conditions in the turn-of-the-century South and finds himself spiritually confused and historically clueless. Ester sends him on a kind of mystical journey to discover the trials of his ancestors and to exorcise several ghosts of his own. The play also features a character named Solly Two Kings, another former slave and conductor on the Underground Railroad.

For Wilson, Barlow was similar to his own grandfather and to “a whole generation of men who left a life of unspeakable horror in the South and came North,” as he said in a 2000 speech, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Wilson’s work has often been presented in Western New York in productions from the Paul Robeson, Ujima and Studio Arena theaters.