Photo: Ajay Suresh, 2024, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, croppedBlack History Month 2027
February 1–28
Photo: Ajay Suresh, 2024, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, croppedPhoto to come · Africatown Heritage House, Mobile, Alabama
Photo to come · March on Washington, 1963
Start with the questions
When is Black History Month, why February, and who started it. Direct answers first, then the full history, with sources beside every claim.
Why February?Meet the people
Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more, each linked to an official record.
Important peopleVisit the places
Twenty-two museums and historic sites, from the Smithsonian on the National Mall to Africatown in Mobile and Greenwood Rising in Tulsa.
Museums and sitesFaces of the story
Meet all twenty-four
The people who made it
From abolition to civil rights: six lives, in order, across 150 years of the American story.
Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist and author, born enslaved in 1818
Harriet Tubman
Led dozens to freedom on the Underground Railroad
Ida B. Wells
Journalist who exposed lynching, starting in 1892
W.E.B. Du Bois
Scholar, NAACP founder, editor of The Crisis
Carter G. Woodson
Historian who founded Negro History Week in 1926
Photo to come
Martin Luther King Jr.
Gave the “I Have a Dream” speech, 1963
From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.
…a true, unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the South.
The guides
All guides
Start reading
Photo to come · Black History Month observance
LearnWhen Is Black History Month?
Black History Month runs February 1–28, 2027, in the United States. Learn when it started, why it's in February, and how it became official.
Photo to come · Carter G. Woodson Home
LearnWho Started Black History Month?
Historian Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week in 1926. Kent State students turned it into a month in 1970. Here is how Black History Month began.
Photo to come · Cedar Hill, Frederick Douglass's home
LearnWhy Is Black History Month in February?
Black History Month is in February because Carter G. Woodson built it around Lincoln's and Douglass's birthdays. Here is the history behind the choice.
Photo to come · Important people
PeopleImportant People in Black American History
Meet twenty-four people who shaped Black American history, from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Maya Angelou, with sources.
Photo to come · Point Comfort, Fort Monroe, Virginia
LearnBlack History Facts
Thirty-two verified facts about Black American history, from 1619 to today, each linked to the National Archives, Library of Congress, National Park Service, or Census Bureau.
Photo to come · March on Washington, 1963
LearnBlack American History Timeline
A sourced timeline of Black American history from 1619 to 2026, covering slavery, Reconstruction, the Great Migration, civil rights, and today.
Black History Museums and Historic Places to Visit
A guide to Black history museums and historic sites across the United States, from the Smithsonian's NMAAHC to Africatown, Greenwood Rising, and Cedar Hill.
Photo to come · Smithsonian program on the National Mall
ExploreBlack History Month Events
Find Black History Month 2027 events: ASALH's national festival, Smithsonian programs, National Park Service sites, and city-by-city listings.
Culture, joy, and invention
What we built
Black history is also poetry, music, scholarship, enterprise, sport, and flight.
Art · 1960s to today
The Quilts of Gee's Bend
In a bend of the Alabama River, descendants of people enslaved on a cotton plantation turned a quilting tradition into art shown in America's great museums. The Postal Service put their quilts on stamps in 2006, and three of the quilters received the nation's highest folk-arts honor in 2015.
Visit Gee's Bend and buy from the quiltersEncyclopedia of Alabama · USPS · National Endowment for the ArtsPhoto to come · Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, 1773
Literature · 1773The first book of poetry by a Black American
Phillis Wheatley, enslaved in Boston, published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in London at about age twenty.
Library of CongressPhoto to come · Fisk Jubilee Singers
Music · 1871The Fisk Jubilee Singers
Students who toured to save their university, sang for Queen Victoria in 1873, and raised nearly $50,000 for Jubilee Hall.
Tennessee Encyclopedia
Madam C.J. Walker
Born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, she built a hair-care company with about 20,000 trained sales agents and gave widely to Black schools.
Smithsonian
The Tuskegee Airmen
More than 16,000 people served in the program. Its fighter groups destroyed 262 German aircraft in World War II. Daniel “Chappie” James Jr., who trained and taught at Tuskegee, became the Air Force’s first Black four-star general.
U.S. Air ForceNational Park ServicePhoto to come · Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers
Sport · 1947Jackie Robinson takes the field
On April 15, 1947, Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field and broke baseball's color line.
Library of Congress
99 HBCUs
Historically Black colleges and universities in 19 states, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands enrolled about 289,000 students in 2022.
National Center for Education StatisticsEnterprise · 1966
The Freedom Quilting Bee
In 1966, more than 60 quilters from Gee's Bend, Alberta, and nearby communities pooled their work into a cooperative, one of the few run by Black women anywhere in the country. Membership grew past 150, the Bee brought steady income home, and its patchwork helped spark a national revival of the craft. The members broke ground on their own sewing center in Alberta in 1969. It is a museum today.
Visit the Freedom Quilting Bee museumFreedom Quilting Bee Legacy · Gee's Bend Welcome Center exhibit
The Great Migration, 1910–1970
6 million
Black Americans who left the South for cities in the North and West.
Source: U.S. Census BureauPhoto to come · National Museum of African American History and Culture
Photo to come · African Meeting House, Boston
Alabama
All museums and sites
Where the story runs deep
Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, and Tuskegee hold some of the most important civil rights and freedom sites in the country, and they can be visited on one route.
Photo to come · Africatown Heritage House, Mobile
MobileAfricatown Heritage House
The story of the Clotilda and the town its survivors founded, with pieces of the ship.
Photo to come · National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery
MontgomeryThe Legacy Museum and National Memorial
The first national memorial to victims of racial terror lynching, opened in 2018.
Edmund Pettus Bridge
Where about 600 marchers were attacked on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.
16th Street Baptist Church
The 1963 bombing killed four girls. The Civil Rights Institute anchors the same district.
Photo to come · Moton Field, Tuskegee
TuskegeeTuskegee Airmen National Historic Site
Moton Field, where nearly 1,000 Black pilots began flight training in World War II.
Plan your visit
Spending the day in Mobile?
After Africatown, find Black-owned restaurants, shops, and this week's events in The Mobile Edit.
Explore Mobile today From House of Salt & Noir, our sister guide to cities, culture, and business.Timeline
Full timeline
Dates that shaped the country
- 1619
Point Comfort, Virginia
Captive Africans from the Ndongo kingdom are brought ashore in the Virginia colony.
- 1863
Emancipation Proclamation
Takes effect January 1 in Confederate-held territory.
- 1865
Thirteenth Amendment
Slavery is abolished when the amendment is ratified on December 6.
- 1870
A first in the Senate
Hiram Revels of Mississippi becomes the first Black American senator.
- 1909
The NAACP
The nation's oldest civil rights organization is founded.
- 1910
The Great Migration
About six million people leave the South for the North and West by 1970.
- 1926
Negro History Week
Carter G. Woodson launches the observance in February.
- 1954
Brown v. Board
The Supreme Court rules school segregation unconstitutional.
- 1955
Montgomery
Rosa Parks is arrested on December 1. The bus boycott lasts 381 days.
- 1965
Voting Rights Act
Signed August 6, five months after Bloody Sunday in Selma.
- 1976
A national month
President Ford issues the first Black History Month message.
- 2016
The national museum
The Smithsonian's NMAAHC opens on the National Mall.
- 2021
Juneteenth
June 19 becomes a federal holiday.
Archives and records
Go to the source
The collections our guides are built on, and where to start your own research.
Freedmen's Bureau records
Labor contracts, marriage records, and letters from 1865 to 1872, key to tracing families after emancipation.
National ArchivesHistoric newspapers
Searchable newspaper pages from 1756 to 1963, by title, state, and date.
Library of CongressFreedmen's Bureau Search Portal
Search millions of Bureau records by name, place, and date in one place.
NMAAHCAfrican American Heritage
Guides to military, census, civil rights, and migration records.
National ArchivesWatch
Short films on long history
An original series in production. Each film will ship with a transcript, sources, and a companion guide.
Photo to come · Africatown, Mobile
Africatown: the community the Clotilda survivors built
The ship, the survivors, and the descendants who still live in the community they founded.
Photo to come · Carter G. Woodson
In production
Why February? The Woodson decision
Photo to come · Greenwood District, Tulsa
In production
Greenwood before and after 1921
Photo to come · Freedmen's Bureau records
In production
How to read a Freedmen's Bureau record
Photo to come · Great Migration
In production
The Great Migration in five maps
Our standard
Every page shows its sources
News feeds tell us what people are talking about. We report each story from primary records, museums, and archives, and we date every review.
Find the story
We follow Black press and history news for openings, restorations, and archive releases.
Go to the record
National Park Service, Library of Congress, National Archives, state archives, and museums come first.
Write it fresh
Original writing, with established fact kept apart from interpretation and oral history.
Cite and date it
Sources beside the claims, and a last-reviewed date on every page.
Twenty-eight days, twenty-eight letters.
One short story from Black American history each day in February, with a place to visit and a record to explore.