Memory does not keep time the way clocks do. It keeps impact. It keeps feeling. It keeps the moments when something inside us recognized truth befo
Memory does not keep time the way clocks do.
It keeps impact.
It keeps feeling.
It keeps the moments when something inside us recognized truth before our minds had words for it.
That is why so many people remember February not by dates, but by what it felt like when Michael Jackson took hold of the world’s attention and did not flinch from who he was.
When Black or White premiered at the start of February, it wasn’t just a video.
It was a pause.
A collective breath shared across borders, languages, and living rooms.
And when Remember the Time arrived at the edge of February-Black History Month- it carried that same gravity.
It did not need the exact same calendar placement to land in memory the same way.
It arrived with meaning already attached.
That is how memory works.
Michael Jackson understood something many never learn:
universality is not achieved by erasing yourself.
It is achieved by standing fully inside who you are.
We always knew where he came from.
A working-class Black family. A large one. Jehovah’s Witnesses.
A small house in Detroit.
Siblings stacked close together in shared space and shared dreams.
A childhood shaped by discipline, music, labor, and love.
Those roots were never hidden.
They were the ground beneath everything he built.
He did not run from them.
He carried them with him into stadiums, into studios, into history.
Some people mistook complexity for rejection.
They misread his skin condition instead of learning about it.
They misinterpreted his wide circle of friends as disloyalty.
They confused his love for many cultures with a lack of love for his own.
But the truth was simpler and deeper.
He did not abandon his culture.
He expanded the room.
He showed what it looks like when a Black man is so at home in himself that he can welcome the world without shrinking. (Never said one demeaning word about Black women or men, only put us all in beautiful lights, set us to music, and put us on stages with alongside him)
That confidence unsettled people who needed identity to be narrow, controlled, and easily categorized.
So they rewrote him.
They projected.
They speculated.
Memory, however, kept the truth.
February remembers him not because of a date on a calendar, but because of alignment.
A Black artist holding global attention without apology
African and diasporic imagery centered with beauty and authority
Unity offered without surrender
Love expressed without dilution
That is why people say, “It was February,” even when the math gets fuzzy.
Meaning leaves fingerprints.
Calendars do not.
Michael Jackson had the world in his hands.
And instead of running from who he was, he stood inside it fully.
That is why people from everywhere found themselves in his work.
Not because he became less specific, but because he became more honest.
Memory remembers that.
Not the date.
Not the broadcast schedule.
But the moment when truth met timing and stayed.
P.S. And hell yeah, I’m feeling Jossie Harris Thacker. Because if I had danced with the Janet Jackson (That’s the Way Love Goes) and the Michael Jackson in REMEMBER THE TIME…
No Sir. No Ma’am. You could not tell me nothing ever again.
She did not say that exactly but I would. LOL.
Remember the Time Facts
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Premiered late January 1992 with heavy prime-time rotation spilling into early February
- Cinematic scale, ancient African imagery, and unapologetic Black brilliance
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Premiered as a high-profile TV event in the U.S., heavily coordinated across major networks and MTV
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Closely tied to Super Bowl weekend attention and prime-time placement
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Felt like a cultural takeover, even if it wasn’t a single worldwide clock-strike moment
While its official premiere date is generally cited as January 31, 1992, many people experienced it during the opening days of February due to:
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Saturation airplay
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Prime-time scheduling
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Super Bowl–adjacent media attention