Home — Essay Samples — History — African American History — Black History Month: The Importance of Knowing African American History

test_template

Black History Month: The Importance of Knowing African American History

  • Categories: African American African American History

About this sample

close

Words: 553 |

Updated: 1 December, 2023

Words: 553 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited:

  • Aitken, R., & Dupuis, M. (2017). Risk, governance, and compliance after the global financial crisis: The implications of regulatory capitalism for the restructuring of financial services. Regulation & Governance, 11(2), 125-139.
  • Campbell, A. (2014). Jordan Belfort's "The Wolf of Wall Street" and the Corruption of the American Dream. Journal of American Culture, 37(2), 252-265.
  • Covell, J., & Crispin, L. (2017). Masculinity, gender and the domain of the sales organization. Gender, Work & Organization, 24(3), 274-287.
  • Diamond, J. (2013). The wolf of wall street: How Hollywood infiltrated the Dow Jones. Financial Times, 1.
  • Elazar, M. (2016). “Wolf of Wall Street” on trial: Pop culture in the court of law. Rutgers Journal of Law & Public Policy, 13(2), 301-331.
  • Field, D. (2015). High rollers: Inside the savings and loan disaster. University of Texas Press.
  • Kondratieva, M. A., & Semenov, V. P. (2019). Moral values in the context of Wall Street. European Journal of Science and Theology, 15(3), 143-155.
  • Levin, M. J. (2016). From Jordan Belfort to Steve Cohen: The ethical perils of insider trading. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(3), 549-563.
  • Lowry, D. T., & Gaskin, J. (2019). Gender and power in the workplace: Analyzing the influence of the #MeToo movement in organizational research. Journal of Management Inquiry, 28(4), 402-409.
  • McNair, B. (2018). Gender stereotypes in the media. In The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender (pp. 57-66). Routledge.

Video Version

Video Thumbnail

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

  • 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
  • Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

author

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

  • Expert in: Sociology History

writer

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1349 words

4 pages / 1735 words

2 pages / 755 words

3 pages / 1251 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Black History Month: The Importance of Knowing African American History Essay

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on African American History

Why is Black History Month important? Essay on the relevance of Black History in present day is one which is of greater importance and awareness. The Black History month is one which is annually celebrated with the remembrance [...]

The War of 1812, fought between the United States and Great Britain, is often overshadowed by the American Revolution and the Civil War. However, it had significant impacts on the United States that affected its political, [...]

Black History Month is a significant cultural celebration that should be observed and commemorated for several reasons. This essay aims to explore the historical context, achievements, contributions, promotion of social justice [...]

Black History Month, celebrated every February, is a significant observance in the United States and beyond. In this essay, we will explore the historical importance of Black History Month and how it serves as a vital platform [...]

Dr. Carter G. Woodson was father of Black History Month, he was born in1875 near New Canton, VA. He was the son of former slaves. In 1907, he obtained his BA degree from the University of Chicago. In 1912, he received his PhD [...]

Perhaps one of the most acclaimed and controversial radical group of all time, the Black Panther Party were “Young, brash and eloquent”, making them so feared in the late 1960’s. Though many people praised the movement, many [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

  • Instructions Followed To The Letter
  • Deadlines Met At Every Stage
  • Unique And Plagiarism Free

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Black History Month: What is it and why is it important?

Black History Month - A visitor at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

Black History Month is an opportunity to understand Black histories. Image:  Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Alem Tedeneke

5 paragraph essay on black history month

.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Economic Progress is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;color:#2846F8;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{font-size:1.125rem;}} Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:, economic progress.

This article was originally published in February 2021 and has been updated .

  • A continued engagement with history is vital as it helps give context for the present.
  • Black History Month is an opportunity to understand Black histories, going beyond stories of racism and slavery to spotlight Black achievement.
  • This year's theme is African Americans and the Arts.

February is Black History Month. This month-long observance in the US and Canada is a chance to celebrate Black achievement and provide a fresh reminder to take stock of where systemic racism persists and give visibility to the people and organizations creating change. Here's what to know about Black History Month and how to celebrate it this year:

Have you read?

Black history month: key events in a decade of black lives matter, here are 4 ways businesses can celebrate black history month, how did black history month begin.

Black History Month's first iteration was Negro History Week, created in February 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, known as the "father of Black history." This historian helped establish the field of African American studies and his organization, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History , aimed to encourage " people of all ethnic and social backgrounds to discuss the Black experience ".

“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” ― Carter G. Woodson

His organization was later renamed the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and is currently the oldest historical society established for the promotion of African American history.

Why is Black History Month in February?

February was chosen by Woodson for the week-long observance as it coincides with the birthdates of both former US President Abraham Lincoln and social reformer Frederick Douglass. Both men played a significant role in helping to end slavery. Woodson also understood that members of the Black community already celebrated the births of Douglass and Lincoln and sought to build on existing traditions. "He was asking the public to extend their study of Black history, not to create a new tradition", as the ASALH explained on its website.

How did Black History Month become a national month of celebration?

By the late 1960s, thanks in part to the civil-rights movement and a growing awareness of Black identity, Negro History Week was celebrated by mayors in cities across the country. Eventually, the event evolved into Black History Month on many college campuses. In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History month. In his speech, President Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history”.

Since his administration, every American president has recognized Black History Month and its mission. But it wasn't until Congress passed "National Black History Month" into law in 1986 that many in the country began to observe it formally. The law aimed to make all Americans "aware of this struggle for freedom and equal opportunity".

Why is Black History Month celebrated?

Initially, Black History Month was a way of teaching students and young people about Black and African-Americans' contributions. Such stories had been largely forgotten and were a neglected part of the national narrative.

Now, it's seen as a celebration of those who've impacted not just the country but the world with their activism and achievements. In the US, the month-long spotlight during February is an opportunity for people to engage with Black histories, go beyond discussions of racism and slavery, and highlight Black leaders and accomplishments.

What is this year's Black History Month theme?

Every year, a theme is chosen by the ASALH, the group originally founded by Woodson. This year's theme, African Americans and the Arts .

"In the fields of visual and performing arts, literature, fashion, folklore, language, film, music, architecture, culinary and other forms of cultural expression, the African American influence has been paramount," the website says.

Is Black History Month celebrated anywhere else?

In Canada, they celebrate it in February. In countries like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Ireland, they celebrate it in October. In Canada, African-Canadian parliament member Jean Augustine motioned for Black History Month in 1995 to bring awareness to Black Canadians' work.

When the UK started celebrating Black History Month in 1987, it focused on Black American history. Over time there has been more attention on Black British history. Now it is dedicated to honouring African people's contributions to the country. Its UK mission statement is: "Dig deeper, look closer, think bigger".

Why is Black History Month important?

For many modern Black millennials, the month-long celebration for Black History Month offers an opportunity to reimagine what possibilities lie ahead. But for many, the forces that drove Woodson nearly a century ago are more relevant than ever. As Lonnie G. Bunch III, Director of the Smithsonian Institution said at the opening of the Washington D.C.'s National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016: “There is no more powerful force than a people steeped in their history. And there is no higher cause than honouring our struggle and ancestors by remembering".

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

The Agenda .chakra .wef-n7bacu{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-weight:400;} Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

.chakra .wef-1dtnjt5{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;} More on Economic Progress .chakra .wef-17xejub{-webkit-flex:1;-ms-flex:1;flex:1;justify-self:stretch;-webkit-align-self:stretch;-ms-flex-item-align:stretch;align-self:stretch;} .chakra .wef-nr1rr4{display:-webkit-inline-box;display:-webkit-inline-flex;display:-ms-inline-flexbox;display:inline-flex;white-space:normal;vertical-align:middle;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:0.75rem;border-radius:0.25rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;line-height:1.2;-webkit-letter-spacing:1.25px;-moz-letter-spacing:1.25px;-ms-letter-spacing:1.25px;letter-spacing:1.25px;background:none;padding:0px;color:#B3B3B3;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;box-decoration-break:clone;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;}@media screen and (min-width:37.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:0.875rem;}}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:1rem;}} See all

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Chinese consumer prices fall and other economics stories to read this week

February 9, 2024

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Expect the unexpected: The IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva on what's ahead for the global economy

Simon Torkington

February 8, 2024

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Lessons from Cambodia: how it is outgrowing its least developed status through openness

Cham Nimul and Ratnakar Adhikari

5 paragraph essay on black history month

These 6 ‘longevity economy’ principles can help an ageing population live well

Victoria Masterson

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Global economy nears soft landing, says IMF

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas

5 paragraph essay on black history month

A $6 billion investment in Africa’s future and other key outcomes from the Italy-Africa summit

Cengage Logo-Home Page

  • Instructors
  • Institutions
  • Teaching Strategies
  • Higher Ed Trends
  • Academic Leadership
  • Affordability
  • Product Updates

Black History Month 2024: African Americans and the Arts 

A woman reads a book

The national theme for Black History Month 2024 is “ African Americans and the Arts .”  

Black History Month 2024 is a time to recognize and highlight the achievements of Black artists and creators, and the role they played in U.S. history and in shaping our country today.  

To commemorate this year’s theme, we’ve gathered powerful quotes about learning, culture and equality from five historic Black American authors, teachers and artists who made a significant impact in the Arts, education ― and the nation.  

  Making history  

“Real education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better.” – Carter G. Woodson, Author, Journalist, Historian and Educator, 1875-1950  

Known as the “Father of Black History,” Carter G. Woodson was primarily self-taught in most subjects. In 1912, he became the second Black person to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard.   

He is the author of more than 30 books, including “T he Mis-Education of the Negro. ”  

Carter G. Woodson dedicated his life to teaching Black History and incorporating the subject of Black History in schools. He co-founded what is now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. (ASALH) . In February 1926, Woodson launched the first Negro History Week , which has since been expanded into Black History Month.  

Carter G. Woodson

Providing a platform  

“I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent.” – Augusta Savage, Sculptor, 1892-1962  

An acclaimed and influential sculptor of the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Savage was a teacher and an activist who fought for African American rights in the Arts. She was one out of only four women, and the only Black woman, commissioned for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. She exhibited one of her most famous works, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which she named after the hymn by James Weldon Johnson, sometimes referred to as the Black National Anthem. Her sculpture is also known as “ The Harp, ” renamed by the fair’s organizers.  

Photograph of Augusta Savage

Raising a voice  

“My mother said to me ‘My child listen, whatever you do in this world no matter how good it is you will never be able to please everybody. But what one should strive for is to do the very best humanly possible.’” – Marian Anderson, American Contralto, 1897-1993  

Marian Anderson broke barriers in the opera world. In 1939, she performed at the Lincoln Memorial in front of a crowd of 75,000 after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) denied her access to the DAR Constitution Hall because of her race. And in 1955, Marian Anderson became the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. She sang the leading role as Ulrica in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera.  

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Influencing the world  

“The artist’s role is to challenge convention, to push boundaries, and to open new doors of perception.” – Henry Ossawa Tanner, Painter, 1859-1937  

Henry Ossawa Tanner is known to be the first Black artist to gain world-wide fame and acclaim. In 1877, he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , where he was the only Black student. In 1891, Tanner moved to Paris to escape the racism he was confronted with in America. Here, he painted two of his most recognized works, “ The Banjo Lesson” and “ The Thankful Poor of 1894. ”    

In 1923, Henry O. Tanner was awarded the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government, France’s highest honor.  

Henry Ossawa Tanner

Rising up  

“Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.” – Phillis Wheatley, Poet, 1753-1784  

At about seven years old, Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped from her home in West Africa and sold into slavery in Boston. She started writing poetry around the age of 12 and published her first poem, “ Messrs. Hussey and Coffin ,” in Rhode Island’s Newport Mercury newspaper in 1767.   

While her poetry spread in popularity ― so did the skepticism. Some did not believe an enslaved woman could have authored the poems. She defended her work to a panel of town leaders and became the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry. The panel’s attestation was included in the preface of her book.  

Phillis Wheatley corresponded with many artists, writers and activists, including a well-known 1 774 letter to Reverand Samson Occom about freedom and equality.  

Phillis Wheatley with pen and paper

Honoring Black History Month 2024  

Art plays a powerful role in helping us learn and evolve. Not only does it introduce us to a world of diverse experiences, but it helps us form stronger connections. These are just a few of the many Black creators who shaped U.S. history ― whose expressions opened many doors and minds.  

Black History Month is observed each year in February. To continue your learning, go on a journey with Dr. Jewrell Rivers, as he guides you through Black History in higher education. Read his article, “A Brief History: Black Americans in Higher Education.”  

Related articles

Student reading a book

The Meaning of Black History Month

The calendar turning to February marks the beginning of Black History Month, offering us all the time to reflect on African American history, celebrate Black achievements and acknowledge these central contributions to US history as a whole. We spoke with various Black faculty and staff to get their perspective on what Black History Month means to them. Read on to discover what we learned from the responses of Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara and Kia Hunter.

Note that quotes have been edited for clarity and conciseness.

What does Black History mean to you?

5 paragraph essay on black history month

CCP: It means everything. Black history is an opportunity to explore the themes central to humanity: civilization, freedom, and liberty. Africa is the birthplace of humanity and home to the first civilizations. Furthermore, we are currently living in the wake of colonialism and extraction from the African continent. Black history is the history of humanity

KH: Black History is very important to my family and me. It is a celebration of culture and of our ancestors, while remembering their challenges, sacrifices, achievements. It is a time where I am particularly proud of my ancestors’ resilience, effort, and advocacy towards freedom and justice. It is a time where I am thankful for those who paved the way, and honor them by doing my part in moving fiercely forward to meet life’s challenges.

Is there a figure or event in the Black community that is significant or important to you?

KH: While there are plenty of prominent members in the African American community who have made significant contributions toward Black history, I find Secretary Marcia L. Fudge and the late Senator John Lewis to be the most significant to me. Both individuals worked in the background for years before becoming leaders in their own respects. They both made significant strides to improve the lives of disadvantaged people, give voice to the voiceless, and mentor those who came behind them. The late Senator Lewis died trying to make the world a better place, and Secretary Fudge continues that work to this day.

CCP: Reconstruction (1865 – 1877) is one of the most important and least understood historical periods in American history. It was a period of intense conflict over the definition of American citizenship and the nation’s first widespread experience with terrorism in the form of white supremacist organizations. However, the era also produced remarkable, if not enforced, achievements—the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1875.

What can allies and members of the community do to meaningfully celebrate Black History?

CCP: Allies can educate themselves on the history of anti-Blackness as well as social, economic and political race-based discrimination and its legacy. And when they find themselves in positions of power and influence, they must remember how racial inequalities and disparities were historically constructed and act accordingly.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

KH: Members of the community can educate themselves on events, culture, history, and achievements of the Black community. There are so many folks who played significant roles in shaping this world, yet are not recognized. Continuing your learning and expanding your knowledge of these individuals is an ongoing experience. In addition, they can lift the Black voice by seeking out and amplifying Black individuals in the spaces and places they may not have access to. Doing so creates a richer inclusive narrative.

What media would you recommend as a resource to learn more about Black history and Black contributions to our society and culture?

KH: Watching any movie or reading any book that will educate you on how black folks and culture have helped shape America would be good to focus on. In addition, I challenge folks to read about the “hidden figures” in the black community that aren’t always recognized for leaving their mark on the world we live in today.

  • Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution by Eric Foner
  • A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
  •  Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities by Craig Steven Wilder
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
  • Africa’s Great Civilization (PBS 5 part series) https://www.pbs.org/show/africas-great- civilizations/
  • Election 2024
  • Entertainment
  • Newsletters
  • Photography
  • Press Releases
  • Israel-Hamas War
  • Russia-Ukraine War
  • Latin America
  • Middle East
  • Asia Pacific
  • AP Top 25 College Football Poll
  • Movie reviews
  • Book reviews
  • Financial Markets
  • Business Highlights
  • Financial wellness
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Social Media

What you need to know about the origins of Black History Month

Black History Month begins each year on the first day of February. Considered one of the nation’s oldest organized history celebrations, the month has been recognized by U.S. presidents for decades through proclamations and celebrations. (Feb. 5)

  • Copy Link copied

This article by former AP reporter Jesse J. Holland was originally published on Feb. 2, 2017.

Black History Month is considered one of the nation’s oldest organized history celebrations, and has been recognized by U.S. presidents for decades through proclamations and celebrations. Here is some information about the history of Black History Month.

How did Black History Month start?

FILE - Carter G. Woodson in an undated photograph. Woodson is a founder of the Association for the Study of African American History, who first came up with the idea of the celebration that became Black History Month. Woodson, the son of recently-freed Virginia slaves who went on to earn a Ph.D in history from Harvard, originally came up with the idea as Negro History Week to encourage black Americans to become more interested in their own history.  (AP Photo)

Carter G. Woodson in an undated photograph. Woodson is a founder of the Association for the Study of African American History, who first came up with the idea of the celebration that became Black History Month. (AP Photo, File)

It was Carter G. Woodson , a founder of the Association for the Study of African American History, who first came up with the idea of the celebration that became Black History Month. Woodson, the son of recently freed Virginia slaves, who went on to earn a Ph.D in history from Harvard, originally came up with the idea of Negro History Week to encourage Black Americans to become more interested in their own history and heritage. Woodson worried that Black children were not being taught about their ancestors’ achievements in American schools in the early 1900s.

“If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated,” Woodson said.

Why is Black History Month in February?

Woodson chose February for Negro History Week because it had the birthdays of President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass . Lincoln was born on Feb. 12, and Douglass, a former slave who did not know his exact birthday, celebrated his on Feb. 14.

Daryl Michael Scott, a Howard University history professor and former ASAAH president, said Woodson chose that week because Black Americans were already celebrating Lincoln’s and Douglass’s birthdays. With the help of Black newspapers, he promoted that week as a time to focus on African-American history as part of the celebrations that were already ongoing.

The first Negro History Week was announced in February 1926.

“This was a community effort spearheaded by Woodson that built on tradition, and built on Black institutional life and structures to create a new celebration that was a week long, and it took off like a rocket,” Scott said.

Why the change from a week to a month?

Negro History Week was wildly successful, but Woodson felt it needed more.

Woodson’s original idea for Negro History Week was for it to be a time for student showcases of the African-American history they learned the rest of the year, not as the only week Black history would be discussed, Scott said. Woodson later advocated starting a Negro History Year, saying that during a school year “a subject that receives attention one week out of 36 will not mean much to anyone.”

Individually several places, including West Virginia in the 1940s and Chicago in the 1960s, expanded the celebration into Negro History Month. The civil rights and Black Power movement advocated for an official shift from Black History Week to Black History Month, Scott said, and, in 1976, on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Negro History Week, the Association for the Study of African American History made the shift to Black History Month.

FILE - Six Catholic nuns, including Sister Mary Antona Ebo, front row fourth from left, lead a march in Selma, Ala., on March 10, 1965, in support of Black voting rights and in protest of the violence of Bloody Sunday when white state troopers brutally dispersed peaceful Black demonstrators. Thursday’s Jan 12, 2023, storm inflicted heavy damage on Selma, cutting a wide path through the downtown area. Selma is a majority-Black working class city etched in the history of the civil rights movement and is now recovering from a natural disaster, in a region that has suffered for decades from economic depression and lacking public resources. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Six Catholic nuns, including Sister Mary Antona Ebo, front row fourth from left, lead a march in Selma, Ala., on March 10, 1965, in support of Black voting rights and in protest of the violence of Bloody Sunday when white state troopers brutally dispersed peaceful Black demonstrators. (AP Photo, File)

Presidential recognition

Every president since Gerald R. Ford through Joe Biden has issued a statement honoring the spirit of Black History Month.

Ford first honored Black History Week in 1975, calling the recognition “most appropriate,” as the country developed “a healthy awareness on the part of all of us of achievements that have too long been obscured and unsung.” The next year, in 1976, Ford issued the first Black History Month commemoration, saying with the celebration “we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

Sit-in at the Woolworth store's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. in February 1960. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

President Jimmy Carter added in 1978 that the celebration “provides for all Americans a chance to rejoice and express pride in a heritage that adds so much to our way of life.” President Ronald Reagan said in 1981 that “understanding the history of Black Americans is a key to understanding the strength of our nation.”

5 paragraph essay on black history month

  • Skip to main content
  • Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Black History Month 2024

Black history month 2024 has begun. here's this year's theme and other things to know.

Scott Neuman

Headshot of Jonathan Franklin

Jonathan Franklin

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Large crowds gather at the Washington Monument and around the reflecting pool to demonstrate for civil rights on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C. AP hide caption

Large crowds gather at the Washington Monument and around the reflecting pool to demonstrate for civil rights on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C.

February marks Black History Month, a tradition that got its start in the Jim Crow era and was officially recognized in 1976 as part of the nation's bicentennial celebrations. It aims to honor the contributions that African Americans have made and to recognize their sacrifices.

Here are three things to know about Black History Month:

It was Negro History Week before it was Black History Month

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson , the scholar often referred to as the "father of Black history," established Negro History Week to focus attention on Black contributions to civilization.

According to the NAACP, Woodson — at the time only the second Black American after W.E.B. Du Bois to earn a doctorate from Harvard University — "fervently believed that Black people should be proud of their heritage and [that] all Americans should understand the largely overlooked achievements of Black Americans."

Woodson, the son of former enslaved people, famously said : "If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated."

Here's the story behind Black History Month — and why it's celebrated in February

Black History Month 2022

Here's the story behind black history month — and why it's celebrated in february.

Woodson chose a week in February because of Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was Feb. 12, and Frederick Douglass, who was born enslaved and did not know his actual birth date, but chose to celebrate it on Feb. 14.

"Those two people were central to helping to afford Black people the experience of freedom that they have now," W. Marvin Dulaney, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History ( ASALH ) told NPR in 2023.

Woodson founded ASALH in 1915 and today is the official promoter of Black History Month.

In the decades after the Civil War and through the racial violence that erupted across the country in the years following World War I , there was a concerted effort to repress the teaching of Black history.

"In the South, they tried to suppress Black history or African American history in the public schools," Dulaney says, "particularly about things like Reconstruction and slavery, literally distorting the curriculum."

At the university level, Black studies programs were almost nonexistent, he said. "California was the first state to actually mandate Black history in 1951 for the public schools."

Largely as a result of the civil rights and Black consciousness movements of the 1960s, "you saw an uptick in Black history courses," said LaGarrett King, an associate professor of social studies education at the University at Buffalo.

Across the country, public schools "created all these courses and mandates for Black history," unofficially creating a Black History Month, King said.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

The civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters on Aug. 28, 1963, on the Mall in Washington, D.C., during the March on Washington. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters on Aug. 28, 1963, on the Mall in Washington, D.C., during the March on Washington.

The Black press also helped push the idea, says Marcus Hunter, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

" The Chicago Defender , the Philadelphia Tribune , the Baltimore Afro-American ... they all started to say that this is something we're celebrating," Hunter said.

In 2 U.S. cities haunted by race massacres, facing the past is painful and divisive

In 2 U.S. cities haunted by race massacres, facing the past is painful and divisive

By 1976, it became official, with President Gerald R. Ford declaring February as Black History Month and calling on the public to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."

Today, Black History Month is also celebrated in Canada every February and in the United Kingdom in October.

There's a new theme chosen each year for the celebration

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Robin Thede joins Stephanie Filo, Taylor Mason, and Malinda Zehner Guerra, winners in the outstanding picture editing for variety programming category for "A Black Lady Sketch Show - My Love Language Is Words Of Defamation" to praise their work and express her pride in her all-female staff and crew during night two of the Television Academy's 75th Creative Arts Emmy Awards. Phil McCarten/Invision/AP hide caption

Robin Thede joins Stephanie Filo, Taylor Mason, and Malinda Zehner Guerra, winners in the outstanding picture editing for variety programming category for "A Black Lady Sketch Show - My Love Language Is Words Of Defamation" to praise their work and express her pride in her all-female staff and crew during night two of the Television Academy's 75th Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

Each year, the ASALH chooses a different theme for Black History Month. This year, the theme is "African Americans and the Arts."

"African American artists have used art to preserve history and community memory as well as for empowerment," the ASALH says of this year's theme .

"In 2024, we examine the varied history and life of African American arts and artisans," the organization added.

In part, Dulaney says with this year's theme paying homage to African Americans and the arts, ASALH will aim to celebrate and honor the "richness of the past and present" as we continue to look forward to what the future brings.

Recent controversies over how race is taught echo a time when Black history was often ignored

For Dulaney, the culture wars playing out across the country over how students learn about race feel like a case of history repeating itself.

For many, recent events — the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, for example, and the controversy surrounding critical race theory, an academic framework stating that people who are white have benefited from ingrained racism in American institutions — look like a recurring pattern, he says.

"I grew up in Ohio and we didn't learn about a single African or African American man or woman who had ever done anything in history," Dulaney told NPR.

"Starting in the '60s, through the '70s, we were very successful in integrating African American history of culture into the curriculum," he said.

Florida's AP African American studies ban should raise alarm elsewhere, lawmaker says

Florida's AP African American studies ban should raise alarm elsewhere, lawmaker says

However, "now here we are back, having to push that agenda again ... [against those] trying to suppress the teaching of African American history and culture."

UCLA's Hunter thinks that debate is indicative of where the country is right now. What it really says is, "there's a lot of work to still be done."

However, Black History Month has been and can continue to be a force for better understanding.

"It offers a certain amount of optimism about what is possible if people actually focus on the educational importance of it," he said.

  • Black History Month
  • Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Black History Month Is About Seeing America Clearly

5 paragraph essay on black history month

By Esau McCaulley

Contributing Opinion Writer

Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who did the kinds of jobs featured at career fairs or depicted on television shows. I had never met a Black doctor, lawyer, professor or scientist. Where does a young Black man go when looking for hope? My teachers, overworked as they were, pointed me toward Black luminaries from the past.

The first Black History Month project I recall was about George Washington Carver. I was enthralled with the idea that the early-20th-century agricultural scientist, born into slavery, came up with hundreds of uses for peanuts. By the time Black History Month rolled into full swing, my ode to the master of peanuts sat alongside posters lauding the accomplishments of such stalwarts as Martin Luther King Jr. (he always inspired multiple posters), Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and Sojourner Truth.

Black history, in this frame, is the story of exemplars. We learn about the first Black surgeon, Supreme Court justice or astronaut. This version of Black history endeavors to show Black capability and challenge stereotypes. The lesson is clear: If this Black person from history overcame racism, so could we. With enough grit, determination and patience, we too could go to space or invent hundreds of uses for a common crop.

These exemplars were helpful. But the exercise also left me with a feeling that there was a long list of things Black people had never done and my job was to find one of those things and check it off the list. Then we could stand before the world and say: We have done all the things. Can we have justice now?

This exemplars-based approach to Black history also produced an unintentional consequence. It gave those outside our community license to use Black accomplishment against us. They told us that we needed more exceptional Black people, instead of questioning a society that required such greatness of us. Our very victories were transfigured into condemnations of those still languishing.

I was exposed to a second form of Black History Month when I got older: Black history as corrective. In this version, we learned about Black achievement that had been erased from the historical record. It points us to the African American female mathematicians involved in the space race, as recounted fictionally in the film “Hidden Figures” or the Tuskegee Airmen, whose contributions during World War II were long underappreciated. This is important. One reason that we are still chasing “firsts” is because too many of our accomplishments have been stolen from us. But the problem is that this way of teaching history is about amending a story, instead of telling a more truthful one.

It was not until I got to college that I began to see African American history for what it truly is. It is not a series of heroics or forgotten contributions. It is a different telling of the American story altogether.

What happens when we do not begin with the Mayflower but the slave ship, and tell American history from that perspective? The explicit aim of The Times’s 1619 Project was “to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” This powerful, challenging idea led to a still-raging debate about racism in America that is playing out in school boards and local elections all over the country, with certain books and ideas being ruled out of bounds.

Americans have not been taught enough about anti-Black racism in our past and present. This, to my mind, is beyond dispute. We are poorer as a nation for these omissions. It is also true that scholars of good will can disagree when making sense of the lives of figures long dead. People are complex, and getting at the complexity is no small thing. Education should be a place where such matters are debated openly.

But endless discussions about the intent of the founding fathers miss a fundamental point. History is not merely the study of intent; it encompasses effect. Whether or not every founding father intended to create a government that sanctioned slavocracy, and later Jim Crow, those were the outcomes. To limit the question to the intent at the expense of the experience of the enslaved and their descendants is to prioritize white American intentions or ideals over Black bodies, a mistake our Republic has made over and over.

What cannot be doubted is that for African peoples brought to this land against our will, slavery and anti-Black racism are defining characteristics of our American experience. This is why Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech draws upon the Declaration of Independence in its opening movement. He highlighted the fact that this declaration had little purchase in the lives of Black folks:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

Black history, then, should be a challenge to our Republic and its core narrative. Instead of quibbling with this detail or that, it must raise a fundamental question about the quality of life Black people have been allowed to experience. If we are indeed a part of this nation, then our lives and experiences have a claim on our national narrative. African American history forces us to view the Black experience of injustice not as the interruption of or caveat to an otherwise grand narrative, but as a compelling story in its own right.

Would this leave us with only a tale of woe? No. There is a dark beauty to the American story. The beauty is not in our innocence. We have been party to too much death and terror for that. African American history requires the recasting of our central figures, where those on the sidelines are brought to the forefront. The enslaved must be allowed to unbend their backs and step into the light and claim the glory due to them. Washington and Lincoln must give way to Truth and Douglass as American marvels.

What makes America a wonder is that this is the land upon which my ancestors, despite the odds, fought for and often made a life for themselves. We are great because this land housed the poetry of Phillis Wheatley and Maya Angelou, the advocacy of Fannie Lou Hamer, the urgency of Nina Simone’s music, and the faith-inspired demand for change in Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons.

This way of telling the story allows us to speak of American ideals even if the norm is failure rather than accomplishment. It allows our history to chronicle progress without diminishing the suffering necessary to bring it about. This means, too, that to tell the American story well, the contributions of us Black folks cannot be limited to February.

Black history offers America a chance to see itself both as what we have failed to become and as we wish ourselves to be. It is not to inspire hate for one race or to foment division. America seeing itself clearly is the first step toward owning and then learning from its mistakes. The second step is the long journey to become that which we hope to be: a more perfect — and just — union.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram .

Esau McCaulley ( @esaumccaulley ) is a contributing Opinion writer and an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois. He is the author of “ Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope ” and " Josey Johnson's Hair and the Holy Spirit ." He lives in Wheaton, Ill., with his wife and four children.

Black History Month

Every February, people in the United States celebrate the achievements and history of African Americans as part of Black History Month.

HOW IT STARTED

In 1915, in response to the lack of information on the accomplishments of Black people available to the public, historian Carter G. Woodson co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. In 1926, the group declared the second week of February as “Negro History Week” to recognize the contributions of African Americans to U.S. history. Few people studied Black history and it wasn't included in textbooks prior to the creation of Negro History Week.

This week was chosen because it includes the birthdays of both Frederick Douglass , an abolitionist (someone who wanted to end the practice of enslaving people), and former U.S. president Abraham Lincoln . President Lincoln led the United States during the Civil War , which was primarily fought over the enslavement of Black people in the country. Many schools and leaders began recognizing the week after its creation.

The week-long event officially became Black History Month in 1976 when U.S. president Gerald Ford extended the recognition to “honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” Black History Month has been celebrated in the United States every February since.

WHAT IT HONORS

Black History Month was created to focus attention on the contributions of African Americans to the United States. It honors all Black people from all periods of U.S. history, from the enslaved people first brought over from Africa in the early 17th century to African Americans living in the United States today.

Among the notable figures often spotlighted during Black History Month are Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , who fought for equal rights for Blacks during the 1950s and ’60s; Thurgood Marshall , the first African-American justice appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1967; Mae Jemison , who became the first female African-American astronaut to travel to space in 1992; and Barack Obama , who was elected the first-ever African-American president of the United States in 2008.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH TODAY

Since the first Negro History Week in 1926, other countries have joined the United States in celebrating Black people and their contribution to history and culture, including Canada , the United Kingdom , Germany , and the Netherlands .

Today Black History Month continues the discussion of Black people and their contributions through activities such as museum exhibits and film screenings, and by encouraging the study of achievements by African Americans year-round.

( Learn more at National Geographic. )

explore more

  • African American Heroes

African American Pioneers of Science

1963 march on washington.

  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Your California Privacy Rights
  • Children's Online Privacy Policy
  • Interest-Based Ads
  • About Nielsen Measurement
  • Do Not Sell My Info
  • National Geographic
  • National Geographic Education
  • Shop Nat Geo
  • Customer Service
  • Manage Your Subscription

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

Black History Essay Topics

  • Writing Essays
  • Writing Research Papers
  • English Grammar
  • M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
  • B.A., History, Armstrong State University

Black history is full of fascinating stories, rich culture, great art, and courageous acts that were undertaken within unthinkable circumstances. While Civil Rights events are the most common themes in our studies, we should resist equating Black history only with Civil Rights-era history. This list contains 50 prompts that might lead you into some interesting and little-known information about Black American history.

Note: Your first challenge in studying some of the topics below is finding resources. When conducting an internet search, be sure to place quotation marks around your search term (try different variations) to narrow your results.

  • Black American newspapers
  • Black Inventors
  • Black soldiers in the American Revolution
  • Black soldiers in the Civil War
  • Buffalo Soldiers
  • Buying time
  • Camp Logan Riots
  • Clennon Washington King, Jr.
  • Coffey School of Aeronautics
  • Crispus Attucks
  • Domestic labor strikes in the South
  • Finding lost family members after emancipation
  • First African Baptist Church
  • Formerly enslaved business owners
  • Freedom's Journal
  • Gospel music
  • Gullah heritage
  • Harlem Hellfighters
  • Harlem Renaissance
  • Harriet Tubman
  • Historically Black Colleges
  • History of rock-and-roll
  • Jumping the broom
  • Manumission papers
  • Maroon villages in the eighteenth century
  • Motown Records
  • Multi-cultural pirate ships
  • Narratives by Enslaved People
  • Otelia Cromwell
  • Ownership of property by enslaved people
  • Purchasing freedom
  • Ralph Waldo Tyler
  • Register of Free Persons of Color
  • Secret schools in antebellum America
  • Sherman's March followers
  • Susie King Taylor
  • The Amistad
  • The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
  • The Communist Party (involvement)
  • The Great Migration
  • The Haitian Revolution
  • Tuskegee Airmen
  • Underground Railroad
  • Urban enslavement (related to buying time)
  • Wilberforce College, Ohio
  • Celebrating Black History Month
  • Important Cities in Black History
  • Black History Timeline: 1910–1919
  • Black History Timeline: 1920–1929
  • Black History and Women's Timeline: 1920-1929
  • Black History Timeline: 1940–1949
  • Biography of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Black Historian
  • Black History and Women Timeline 1870-1899
  • Black History from 1950–1959
  • Black History Timeline: 1700 - 1799
  • Black History and Women's Timeline: 1950–1959
  • Black History Timeline: 1890–1899
  • Black History Timeline: 1865–1869
  • Black History Timeline: 1930–1939
  • Black History Timeline: 1880–1889
  • Black History Timeline: 1965–1969

Advertisement

The Spectator

Advertisement

Personal Essays on Black History Month

Personal+Essays+on+Black+History+Month

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-trained educator, working with the Association for the Study of Negro Life established Black History Week – an opportunity to honor the largely unknown contributions of those of African descent and to celebrate the essence of a history that is integral to the narrative of America as apple pie. Nearly 100 years later (92 to be exact), black history in the United States remains incomplete, inauthentic and lopsided. The dominant narrative reinforces negative stereotypes and assumptions that devalue black and brown bodies in America. We are familiar with the common threads – school-to-prison pipeline, mass incarceration, educational achievement gaps to name a few. We are less familiar with (or perhaps less willing to acknowledge) the systemic and structural forces that sustain and lock in advantage; a self-reinforcing system that has been operating for hundreds of years. Moreover, often we recycle our praise for those commonly-known historical figures in black history; leaving a vast delta of information about the unique contributions of black people across disciplines and genres hidden, unacknowledged or forgotten. As an African American woman living in this moment, the promise and peril of what civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s referred to as “beloved community,” seems ever present. It is hard to remain hopeful in the midst of such palpable divisiveness, polarizing forces, coarse language and deeds that are antithetical to creating a society that is inclusive, loving and just. Those who fought, sacrificed, and died deserve our reverence and gratitude, for sure. Significantly, however, to honor the legacy of their contributions demands not only celebratory moments, but also recommitting ourselves to action toward building beloved community. Remembering the past is important to create pathways toward greater understanding, productive dialogue, cross-cultural trust and reconciliation. Discovering those core pieces of American history is vital to building these bridges. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently published a study reflecting our failure as a nation to adequately educate about the difficult and complex history of American slavery; treating slavery as an event rather than integral part of who we are as a country. We must honestly confront our shared history and its relationship to contemporary racial gaps and inequities. Any discussion toward building beloved community cannot take place without confronting the difficult history of American slavery because this history continues to shape our conceptions of race, who belongs and fairness. With Black History Month upon us, I’m mindful of the students, scholars, activists and ordinary citizens who found the courage to remain determined and engaged in the midst of great challenges, vulnerability and danger in order to demand basic human dignity and racial justice. In fact, it was college students and other young people who declared Black History as a month-long exploration rather than a week. Confining black history to a week or month is not the point. The heart of the matter for me is that context matters. This moment signifies our shared history—black history matters for all of us—the story of how America developed, prospered and created an imperfect union, one that continues to bear fruit in rich and complex ways. It’s about educating ourselves and discovering those foundational pieces and hard truths of American history like the enslavement of free people of African descent, genocidal acts like lynching, segregation and the discrimination of Jim Crow, along with the numerous contributions made by black people to the fabric of American life and culture, as well as its infrastructure and industrial capacity. We remember so others will not forget; to affirm and to build a better world. We cannot change that which we do not know and understand or for which we hold little or no respect and curiosity. This month and beyond, I will acknowledge with pride those whose efforts continue to inspire and make history—from the freedom fighters of the Civil Rights Movement (too numerous to name), the vibrancy of the Harlem Renaissance, Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde; to more contemporary history makers including Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick, Ana Duvernay, Shonda Rhimes, Beyoncé, authors like Ibram Kendi and Isabel Wilkerson, Black Panther – the movie, to the official portraits of former President Obama and Michelle Obama, both created by black artists whose subjects and works will hang in the National Gallery for all time. Additionally, as CDO, I will continue to build our capacity to embed and infuse diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the strategic priorities of the institution and to cultivate more productive ways of engaging across differences. The goal is that SU is a place where we harness the power of our differences, embrace creative tension and grow together. I remain hopeful in the midst of challenging times because of the courageous citizens on this campus and beyond who are doing their part to build a more just and humane society—toward beloved community. – Natasha Martin Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion

I’m half Black, half Cuban. Growing up my father never spoke Spanish in the house and I never asked why. My father was a man that never saw color, he always believed you should “trust the soul of a man rather than the look of him.” (Remember the Titans–Coach Yoast). In Petersburg, Va., where I was born and raised, my father became the first Negro in the 60’s to drive a city bus. At the time this was unheard of. He battled his way through racism, and other challenges of negative behavior because he was the only black bus driver for Petersburg Va. Transit Co. (see cover photo). I can remember my mother telling me a story about father’s first week at work. She described it as “hell pure”. Your father pulls up and says, “good morning everyone.” The white passengers were furious and they would not board the bus. So, a group of blacks walked pass the group of white passengers and boarded the bus, deposited their fare and said, “good morning.” After a few minutes the white passengers began to board the bus. They shouted racial slurs, they spit on my father and other passengers and said “hey nigger whose bus did you steal?” as they walked passed him. On top of that, they didn’t pay their fare. When all the passengers got seated, my father put the bus in park and removed his seat belt and stood up. He wasn’t a small man. He stood tall at a height of 6ft 5inches. He began to speak to all the passengers on the bus. This is what he said, “I’m the bus driver and this my route, but if I’m the driver of this bus, you will not disrespect me, put your hands on me or spit on me. Lastly if you have a problem with what I said or I have offended you, you can just remove yourself from my bus.” He returned to his seat, fastened his seat belt, and put the bus in gear and started driving toward Downtown Petersburg. During the bus ride the atmosphere on the bus was so silent you could hear a pin drop. After about a 50-minute bus ride, the bus arrives in Downtown Petersburg. The bus comes to a stop and my father opens the door and all passengers began to exit. As white passengers walked past my father to exit the bus, they deposited their fare and shook my fathers hand and apologized to him and the last white passenger asked if they would we him see later that day, to which my father responded, “yes you will and I will get you home safe to your family.” Black History Month, to me, means a celebration of knowledge. It’s a reflection of the past, present and future in African American Culture. It’s a reminder of all the positive and innovative things that have come from our culture and how it made a huge impact on future generations. It is a time for everyone to experience culture and the roots of many things that have evolved from those of African American decent. Also it’s a time to inform everyone who may not be exposed to African American History the rest of the year. Let’s all take the time to remember the hardships and struggle, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s a remembrance of what we strive for and how the ones before us have paved a way for the things we have today. – Ricco Bland Public Safety Officer

My grandmother was the most influential person in my life until her death in 1997. Today, I draw inspiration both from her memory and the legacy of love and compassion she left behind. I experienced a safe, secure, loving childhood that occurred at the valuable intersection of two circumstances; the youth of my parents and the love of my grandmother. I was positioned to witness the broad range of painful human experiences and given a unique set of assets and blessings that allowed me the ability to develop and grow my understanding of the world I inhabit. Early in my upbringing, my grandmother introduced me to the writings of W.E.B. DuBois. And while I was not fully capable on my own of making sense of his writings as a youngster, the messages of his experiences spoke truth to my reality as I began to mature and grow in my understanding of the world around me. His words of the early 1900s still ring true for me today and underscore the significance of Black History Month in my life so I share them with you in that spirit. After the Egyptian and the Indian, the Greek and the Roman, the Teuton and the Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. (DuBois, 1903) Accordingly, Black History Month is less a month and more a movement that remains alive in me with each breath I take. It is represented in my family who gave me voice and liberated me from the poor rural up bringing that shackled so many before and after me. Black History Month is about deliverance, freedom, reframing experiences, renaming reality and retelling the truth. H. Alexander Welcome (2004) asserted: The life histories of Whites are used as the standard against which Blacks are encouraged to strive. The employment of this ontology fallaciously limits the range of Black agency, producing deceitful narratives where the navigation of the social environment by Blacks is dictated by either a passive response to, or a passive adoption of, White scripts. The utilization of whiteness to determine and/or evaluate blackness begins when whiteness and White life histories come to represent what is “right.” (p. 61) Black History is about transformation, consciousness, definition, and debunking myths and lies. It is represented in the narratives and oral histories of my ancestors told to me by my grandparents and parents and to be shared forward with my own children and the generations to come. It is about an increased understanding of the contributions of Black people throughout our muddled history. It is ultimately about truth and reconciliation. – Alvin Sturdivant Vice President, Student Development

Picture Detroit, Michigan in the 1970’s and you can begin to imagine my childhood. By the time I was ten years old, the mayor of Detroit was a black man, Coleman Young. The superintendent of public schools, Arthur Jefferson, was also a black man. I was blessed to grow up in times permeated by James Brown (“I’m black and I’m proud), the Black Panthers, dashikis, afro hair, and going every Sunday to Triedstone Baptist Church and later Detroit’s Afro-American Mission. In my memory, I hear people reminding me that the history of my race was something of which to be proud. Calendars my parents received from black businesses in town served as black history storybooks. (I honestly can’t remember if they were sent by funeral homes or insurance agencies.) Every year, we received a new calendar depicting black people succeeding in various fields such as Dorie Miller, a Navy gunner killed at Pearl Harbor and honored for his bravery, and Ida B. Wells, the journalist and sociologist who brought lynching into the national consciousness. Black history was not confined to a month at my public school. Yet, February afforded an opportunity for heightened reflections on what it meant to be black in America. Today, February still feels like a time to remember, to catch hold of the past and allow it to inspire me in the present. I recently joked with a friend that I should write a book titled “The Re-education of this Negro” as I have struggled with the times – police brutality against young black men and women, regular reminders of mass incarceration and injustice under the law. At times, the bleakness of the current day overwhelms me. I wish I could say that seeing all of the wrongs propels me toward solutions but at times I feel immobilized by the weight of racism. In contrast, it seems to me that Dr. Woodson called black people to have a knowledge of history because an understanding of the accomplishments of one’s forbears was essential to inspiration, aspiration, and justice. Increasingly, as I struggle with this present darkness I feel the need to draw on the dreams and victories of those who came before. I want to remember how they maintained faith and laughter as well as how tears and sorrow drove them forward. What’s black history month to me? It is both a call and a light. Black history month is the call of many voices saying “Remember. Press on.” Black history month is a light in the darkness that shows a way forward. Black history is about more than a month but this month reminds me to pause and locate myself within history. – Holly Slay Ferraro Associate Professor, Management

  • Black History Month
  • Personal Essays

Grading Contracts Challenge Traditional Principles of Academia

Seattle University's student newspaper since 1933

  • Work at The Spectator!
  • Advertise with us!

Comments (0)

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Black History Month @ GCC: BHM Texts & Essays

  • BHM Books Lobby Display
  • BHM Podcasts
  • BHM on Video
  • Follow Us: BHM Social
  • BHM Texts & Essays

Long Essay + Projects

  • The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates About this Essay: Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
  • The 1619 Project by the New York Times About this project: The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Short Texts

  • 5 Things You Might Not Know About The March On Washington And King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech by Christopher Rhodes About this text: King and other organizers overcame many challenges to give his iconic speech, which was deeper and more radical than most people remember.
  • Tracy Drake, a testimony on Black Motherhood with Tempestt Hazel About this text: For this testimony, we hear from Tracy Drake, a formerly Chicago-based archivist who is now at the Reed College Library in Portland, Oregon. She is also one of the founding members of The Blackivists, a collective of Black archivists doing memory work with and for Black communities. This is her testimony on Black motherhood, a companion piece to a writing called A Rant from a Nerdy Black Girl by Korra, a.k.a. ZP , which focuses on Black girlhood. This piece has been lightly edited for clarity.
  • << Previous: Follow Us: BHM Social
  • Last Updated: Feb 1, 2024 7:41 PM
  • URL: https://campusguides.glendale.edu/blackhistorymonth

Glendale Community College | 1500 North Verdugo Road, Glendale, California 91208 | Tel: 818.240.1000   GCC Home   © 2023 - Glendale Community College. All Rights Reserved. 

National Museum of African American History & Culture

  • Plan Your Visit
  • Group Visits
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Accessibility Options
  • Sweet Home Café
  • Museum Store
  • Museum Maps
  • Our Mobile App
  • Search the Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Initiatives
  • Museum Centers
  • Publications
  • Digital Resource Guide
  • The Searchable Museum
  • Freedmen's Bureau Search Portal

Black History Month Resources

  • Teaching and Learning
  • STEM at NMAAHC
  • School Group Tours
  • Opportunity Corner
  • Early Childhood
  • Talking About Race
  • Digital Learning
  • Strategic Partnerships
  • Ways to Give
  • Internships & Fellowships
  • Today at the Museum
  • Upcoming Events
  • Ongoing Tours & Activities
  • Past Events
  • Host an Event at NMAAHC
  • About the Museum
  • The Building
  • Meet Our Curators
  • Founding Donors
  • Corporate Leadership Councils
  • NMAAHC Annual Reports

Communicator Award of Excellence logo

Students, make your voice heard this Black History Month with our museum. Join us in exploring stories of African Americans in the Arts throughout February, with a special focus on art as a platform for social justice around five weekly focus areas: literature and poetry, performing art, visual art, music and digital art.

  • Week 1, Feb. 1-4: Literature and Poetry
  • Week 2, Feb. 5-11: Performing Arts
  • Week 3, Feb. 12-18: Visual Arts
  • Week 4, Feb. 19-25: Music
  • Week 5, Feb. 26-29: Digital Arts

Social justice has historically created visual and literary arts to capture the spirit and platforms of resistance, and to share those messages to audiences outside of mainstream ways. Art as a platform for social justice is found throughout African American history   .

Resources for the Classroom or Home

NMAAHC Smithsonian Learning Labs All Grades Learning Lab from the Smithsonian Institution is a free, interactive platform for learners and educators. Users can explore well-known and lesser-known moments of history through millions of authentic, digital resources, create content with online tools, and share in the Smithsonian's expansive community of knowledge and learning​.

Grade K-2 and Up

  • Black Women Artists
  • Music & Sound: Instruments in the NMAAHC Collection

Grade 3 and Up

  • Essential Historian Skills: Art As A Platform For Social Justice
  • Essential Historian Skills: Taking the Stage
  • Harriet Tubman
  • Frederick Douglass
  • Madam C.J. Walker
  • Jackie Robinson
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.

Grade 6 and Up

  • In Full Color: The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s
  • Read Between the Brushstrokes: Unite
  • Read Between the Brushstrokes: Walking
  • African American Historians of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
  • The New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance
  • The Science of Sound: Acoustic Activities Inspired by Dr. James West
  • The Corona's Cooling Power
  • A Celebration of African Americans at NASA

Resources for a Museum Visit

NMAAHC Pathways    Grade 3 and Up and Great for Families and Groups    Use these self-guided tour experiences to explore the NMAAHC.

  • Art in Community
  • But Is This Art? 

Essential Historian Skills    Grade 6 and Up    Some of the answers of the past are locked in primary sources. Practice becoming a historian by questioning primary sources in our History Galleries.

  • Artist in Context: Phillis Wheatley 
  • Artist in Context: Paul Laurence Dunbar
  • Art in Context: The Black Arts Movement

My NMAAHC Journal    Grade 3 and Up    Students find artifacts and stories centered on the arts in our Culture Galleries. Practice ways to think like a historian and how to question gallery objects.

  • Exploring the Arts! 

NMAAHC Highlights    Grade 3 and Up    A quick guide of three not-to-miss objects and stories throughout the NMAAHC that highlight the connection between art and social justice.

  • Art as Platform for Social Justice 

Programs at the Museum and Online

Virtual art workshop: gel plate printing.

Image of Virtual Art Workshop: Gel Plate Printing

Explore More! in STEM: Flying High with the Triple Nickles

This is a *free* event!

Event Image for Explore More! in STEM: Flying High with the Triple Nickles

Explore More! in STEM: To the Moon and Beyond!

Event Image for Explore More! in STEM: To the Moon and Beyond!

North Star: A Digital Journey of African American History

Explore African American history through digital activities on the Smithsonian Learning Lab platform. The activities, or collections, have gathered objects, stories, videos and thinking questions all in one place.

Black History Month Digital Toolkit

Join us in uplifting the humanity, innovation and vision of African American artists throughout February.

Subtitle here for the credits modal.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

  • History Classics
  • Your Profile
  • Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
  • Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
  • Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
  • Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
  • Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
  • This Day In History
  • History Podcasts
  • History Vault

Black History

TOPSHOT-BIO-MARTIN LUTHER KING-MARCH ON WASHINGTONTOPSHOT - The civil rights leader Martin Luther King (C) waves to supporters 28 August 1963 on the Mall in Washington DC (Washington Monument in background) during the "March on Washington". - King said the march was "the greatest demonstration of freedom in the history of the United States." Martin Luther King was assassinated on 04 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray confessed to shooting King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. King's killing sent shock waves through American society at the time, and is still regarded as a landmark event in recent US history. AFP PHOTO (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

Civil Rights Movement Timeline

The civil rights movement was an organized effort by black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law. It began in the late 1940s and ended in the late 1960s.

Rosa Parks sitting in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, after the Supreme Court ruled segregation illegal on the city bus system on December 21st, 1956. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions inspired the leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Black History Month

February is dedicated as Black History Month, honoring the triumphs and struggles of African Americans throughout U.S. history.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Black History Milestones: Timeline

Black history in the United States is a rich and varied chronicle of slavery and liberty, oppression and progress, segregation and achievement.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

The Black Explorer Who May Have Reached the North Pole First

In 1909 African American Matthew Henson trekked with explorer Robert Peary, reaching what they claimed was the North Pole. Who got there first?

A photo of Madam C.J. Walker, the first woman to become a self-made millionaire in the United States, driving a car, circa 1911. From the New York Public Library.

How Madam C.J. Walker Became a Self-Made Millionaire

Despite Jim Crow oppression, Walker founded her own haircare company that helped thousands of African American women gain financial independence.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

8 Black Inventors Who Made Daily Life Easier

Black innovators changed the way we live through their many innovations, from the traffic light to the ironing board.

The Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance: Photos From the African American Cultural Explosion

From jazz and blues to poetry and prose to dance and theater, the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century was electric with creative expression by African American artists.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Coretta Scott King

After her husband became pastor, Coretta Scott King joined the choir at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. Hear two of her friends and members of the congregation remember Mrs. King’s legacy and her voice.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

When Segregationists Bombed Martin Luther King Jr.’s House

On January 30, 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.’s house was bombed by segregationists in retaliation for the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Brown v. Board of Education

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously strikes down segregation in public schools, sparking the Civil Rights movement.

5 paragraph essay on black history month

How the Montgomery Bus Boycott Accelerated the Civil Rights Movement

For 382 days, almost the entire African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses, a turning point in the American civil rights movement.

This Day in History

5 paragraph essay on black history month

Frederick Douglass is born

Henry lewis named first black conductor of a major u.s. orchestra, joseph searles iii becomes first black member of the new york stock exchange, harlem hellfighter henry johnson awarded a posthumous medal of honor, rosewood massacre decimates black florida community, the first issue of “ebony” magazine is published.

Why is Black History Month in February, the shortest month of the year?

5 paragraph essay on black history month

"Black History Month is in the shortest month of the year, and the coldest," comedian Chris Rock said in 2015. "Just in case we want to have a parade."

Although at least February has an extra day this year, it's true that Black History Month is celebrated on the shortest month in the calendar year. But it grew out of a week created nearly 100 years ago to honor two of the most important people in the history of Black emancipation in the United States.

Who is the founder of Black History Month?

Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson , a sharecropper and the son of formerly enslaved and illiterate Virginia parents, was a self-made man . He taught himself enough to start high school at the age of 20 and quickly went on to earn a bachelor's degree in literature from Brea College and a master's degree from the University of Chicago. Woodson became the second Black American (after W. E. B. Du Bois) to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard University and joined the faculty there, eventually becoming Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Woodson saw from experience that African American history was being "overlooked, ignored or suppressed." White institutions and textbooks seemed to have little to no interest in including any Black history curriculums, he said, and he devoted much of his life to encouraging Black Americans to learn more about their own heritage and accomplishments.

After seeing thousands of people lining up in 1915 to see a Black history display at a national anniversary of emancipation, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later renamed the Association for the Study of African American History (ASALH). The next year he founded The Journal of Negro History to publish scholarly articles and book reviews on the African American experience. The journal is still going strong today as The Journal of African American History .

"If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated," Woodson said.

Woodson died of a heart attack at the age of 74 in 1950. Two schools in Florida are named for him: Carter G. Woodson Elementary School in Jacksonville and Dr. Carter G. Woodson PK-8 in Tampa.

Why did Black History Month start?

It started as a week.

Woodson had urged his Omega Psi Phi fraternity brothers to promote Black achievements, according to an essay by Daryl Michael Scott, a Howard University history professor and former ASALH national president , and in 1924 they created the Negro Achievement Week.

But Woodson wanted to go bigger. And instead of creating a new celebration, Woodson expanded on an existing tradition.

He established Negro History Week in February 1926 to coincide with days that Black Americans already were celebrating. Black communities had been commemorating the birthdays of "two great Americans who played a prominent role in shaping Black history" for decades, Scott said: President Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass (Feb. 14). With the help of Black newspapers and civic leaders he promoted the week to add Black history to the traditional celebrations.

"He envisioned the study and celebration of the Negro as a race, not simply as the producers of a great man," Scott said. "And Lincoln, however great, had not freed the slaves — the Union Army, including hundreds of thousands of Black soldiers and sailors, had done that. Rather than focusing on two men, the Black community, he believed, should focus on the countless Black men and women who had contributed to the advance of human civilization."

Black History Week caught on and took off. The demand for Black literature and culture rapidly grew in the 1920s and 30s and classrooms across the country demanded Black history curriculums. Woodson continued to promote celebrations but pushed schools to teach Black history all year and use the week to demonstrate what students had learned.

"He spoke of a shift from Negro History Week to Negro History Year," Scott said.

When did Black History Month begin?

Some people in West Virginia expanded the celebration to the whole month as early as the 1940s, and others in Chicago followed in the 60s. Interest grew nationwide during the civil rights era as Black college students were becoming more conscious of their links with Africa, Scott said.

In 1976, on the 50th anniversary of the first Negro History Week, ASALH changed it to Black History Month.

How to celebrate Black History Month 2024

"The history of the United States is certainly taught and conveyed all year long, but its greatest symbolic celebration occurs on one day, the Fourth of July," Scott said. "Black History Month, too, is a powerful symbolic celebration. And symbols always stand for something bigger — in our case, the important role of Black History in pursuit of racial justice and equality."

Black History Month is a time for everyone to celebrate and learn more about Black history and the achievements of Black Americans. Schools from K-12 to universities devote time for all students to study Black history studies, essays, presentations, songs, documentaries and more, and there are multiple public events and festivals.

What is this year’s Black History Month theme?

The theme of this year's Black History Month is " African Americans and the Arts ."

Is Black History Month a federal or legal holiday?

No. But every U.S. president since Gerald Ford has issued a statement honoring the spirit of Black History Month and in 1986 the U.S. Congress designated the month of February as "Black History Month."

Ford honored Black History Week in 1975, calling the recognition "a healthy awareness on the part of all of us of achievements that have too long been obscured and unsung." He issued the first Black History Month commemoration the next year, saying. "we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."

Last year President Joe Biden issued a proclamation saying, "During National Black History Month, we celebrate the legacy of Black Americans whose power to lead, to overcome, and to expand the meaning and practice of American democracy has helped our Nation become a more fair and just society. This country was established upon the profound but simple idea that all people are created equal and should be treated equally throughout their lives.

"It is an idea America has never fully lived up to," he said, "but it is an idea we have never fully walked away from either. The struggles and challenges of the Black American story to make a way out of no way have been the crucible where our resolve to fulfill this vision has most often been tested. Black Americans’ struggles for freedom, equal treatment, and the right to vote; for equal opportunities in education, housing, and the workplace; for economic opportunity, equal justice, and political representation; and so much more have reformed our democracy far beyond its founding.

"Black Americans have made a way not only for themselves but also have helped build a highway for millions of women, immigrants, other historically marginalized communities, and all Americans to more fully experience the benefits of our society."

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

  • Essay Database >
  • Essay Examples >
  • Essays Topics >
  • Essay on History

Black History Month Essay Sample

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: History , American History , America , Nation , Population , United States , Society , Sociology

Published: 03/05/2020

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

“Black history is American History”

Morgan Freeman There are numerous discussions about the value, appropriateness and reasons behind the so called “Black History month” or “African American History month”. This event in the American history received much more social media and academic attention than many other special events or occurrences. One could try to dig down to the reasons of such exaggerated interest that the society takes in this particular occasion, other could simply enjoy the attention and take part in celebrative events without actually thinking of philosophical elements. The reality is that Black History month is one more proof of the conflict and controversy that American society finds itself in. Why would one try to bring forward the importance of the black population contribution to the history of America if not to fight the core issues, related to this event: nationalism, segregation and integration problems and frustration? It is this frustration that American population of black and whites still breath and breath out every day that make this ethnical celebration much longer than any other known ethnical holiday, such as October Fest or St. Patrick´s Day for this matter. The question that I would like to raise here is whether Black History month is the holiday to cherish the contribution of the black society to the American history or is it the declaration of inability to eliminate centennial issues of prejudice and segregation that are present until today in American history? To answer this question it is important to look at the relevance of this holiday. Talking to black Americans about their views on the recognition of black population contribution to the American history, I mostly hear that neither textbooks, nor academic and social literature brought enough attention and recognition of their input to the development of the national identity. Given that, one could argue that Black History Month is a way to finally recognize and acknowledge this contribution, give some room to think and analyze the national values. I undoubtedly agree with the fact that there should be the room for recognition, reevaluation of the national priorities and values and rethinking of segregation issues. This, however, cannot possibly be done by worldwide exposure of the black minority through a sort of “frustration parade’ that Black History Month appears to me. We should change the mentality, vision and values of current and future generations and this can be done through intense and time-consuming learning through basic education and social exposure. It is the black and white intellectuals that have to first of all stop talking about white and black America, white and black history and talk about the complexity and richness of American national identity. It is their voice that makes and will continue making the difference for all and as long as they speak ‘black’ and ‘white’, ‘minority’ and ‘majority’, this voice will create debate and conflict of interests. I would like to argue that current interpretation of the Black History Month is bringing us back to the realization and analysis of racial and social issues that segregated the population of America. The issues of integration and segmentation of the society are still alive and obvious through the perception of both, black and white intellectuals. Unless the history of the Black History Month is seen as an attempt to pay for the mistakes of the past and recognize the value of the minority, the American history will continue to develop through the grid of racial discrimination and social separation. Black History Month is the payment of the tribute towards the centennial issues that America failed to solve and now, when a week celebration grew into a month parade of the self-exposure it is even more obvious that this holiday brings more harm than good to the society than benefits. Black population either hates the holiday for the memories and beliefs of the frontline of the cultural history or values the celebration for the attention and recognition of the mistakes that white population have committed in the past. White intellectuals, on the other hand take pride in recognition of this complicated minority in the modern history and their presence in the rich history of white America; on the other, they are quietly ashamed to argue the lost reasoning behind the actual celebration. I would argue that none of the other ethnical occasions, Hannukah or October Fest need so much time to enjoy the celebration of the cultural elements. None of the known by me ethnical holidays brings to the picture suffering and creates frustration. The purpose of the celebration in its deep core is to illuminate and unite – completely the opposite of what Black History Month actually does today with American society. It is my strong belief that good reason not always gives the expected results. One small group of intellectuals that recognize the value of the black contribution to the history very unlikely manages to bring the message across by throwing a “huge party” for those, who are still in pain and still fight for self-identity as a nation. I am not talking here about whites or blacks, but about American people as they are as opposed to what they are comprised of. I would like to make a statement that may frustrate you or show solidarity: it is not the right timing and, more importantly, Black History Month is not the right method to unite and desegregate, resolve the issues of prejudice and eliminate mass frustration. The past 87 years proved that this holiday makes more harm than good to the American society.

double-banner

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Removal Request

Finished papers: 1098

This paper is created by writer with

ID 256419979

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

submit your paper

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Psychology literature reviews, caller argumentative essays, obedience argumentative essays, workshop argumentative essays, signature argumentative essays, throne argumentative essays, temptation argumentative essays, borrower argumentative essays, counterpressure essays, playa essays, cerebrospinal essays, anthracis essays, binging essays, social anxiety essays, caco essays, bartos essays, ehrlichs essays, disp essays, envenomation essays, the teen brain report sample, the creation of the legal system essay examples, example of physical activity among pregnant women literature review, cushings vs addison research paper example, essay on argument about god, free report on nursing new jersey state health initiatives, good essay about world civilizations through stereotypes and media, behavioral assessments research paper example, good critical thinking on health economics, free transfer request admission essay example, example of supply chain management term paper, procedures in the physical sciences essay examples, free attitudes how they are formed and influenced essay sample, size matter in the history of art essays example, usc admission essay samples, migrating network infrastructure routing term paper samples, free research paper on marketing in the 21st century, walt disney corporation case study samples, critical thinking on probabilities in healthcare, change model analysis essay samples, free case study on negative letter.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

55 African American History Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best african american history topic ideas & essay examples, 🔍 good essay topics on african american history, ✅ most interesting african american history topics to write about.

  • Perspectives in African American History and Culture The point is that a person has both, mind and body, and if a person could not accept the idea of being enslaved, he/she was not a slave.
  • History of African Americans The readings that are going to be discussed in the paper tell the history of African Americans, their struggles for civil rights, and their integration into the social and political life of the country. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
  • African American History and Its Importance in Modern Days Without a clear understanding of this part of history, slavery would not have evolved to the current citizenship, freedom and human rights that we enjoy in our constitution.
  • History of Higher Education for African Americans Even if I had the opportunity to participate in higher education, I could not have managed to take advantage of it since it was expensive, and I would have nothing to eat after school.
  • Robert R. Moton’s Role in African American History In conclusion, this article has helped to get a better understanding of the topic and what events took place at that time.
  • King Jr. and Malcolm X in African American History Malcolm was able to sell his ideas to the African Americans in various meetings in the streets of Harlem and in major universities across the United States.
  • African American History After Reconstruction The bureau also helped champion African Americans’ rights by pushing for the 14th and 15th amendments of the constitution that would give African Americans voting rights.
  • African American History in the 20th Century The NAACP was radical since it fought many legal battles and fought against ideologies of some of the most prominent African American leaders like those of the late Booker Washington and the government.
  • African American History: The Struggle for Freedom The history of the Jacksons Rainbow coalition shows the rise of the support of the African American politicians in the Democratic party.
  • African Americans Struggle Against Slavery The following paragraphs will explain in detail the two articles on slavery and the African American’s struggle to break away from the heavy and long bonds of slavery. The website tells me that Dredd Scott […]
  • Lynching History of African Americans: An Absurd Illegal Justice System in the 19th Century Another attempt to explain the origin of lynch law is that of regulators and moderators. According to Rhodes, this theory is not applicable because the name of the law and order maintenance unit was aregulators’ […]
  • The African American History: The Historical Weight of 1776 A number of us, who arrived unexpectedly, became indentured to Virginia masters through a bidding process that was to some extent similar to later slave auctions that would become all in all widespread in the […]
  • The Series of Injustices Spanned the History of African Americans A series of failures for Americans began with the emergence of slavery in the USA. However, it is impossible to talk about the complete eradication of racism in the country.
  • History and True Meaning of African American Slave Music The ancestors of African Americans were forcibly separated from their homes and brought to the United States to work on the plantations of the Old South.
  • African Americans: History and Modernity Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people brought from Africa, and the research focuses on the connection between the current state of African Americans concerning their history.
  • The History of the Black Lives Matter Movement
  • African American History: 1865 to the Present
  • The Black History Month: The Importance of Black History
  • Overview of African American History and Culture
  • African American History: Religious Influences 1770 – 1831
  • The Brief History of Black Nationalism
  • Who Is Considered the Father of Black History
  • African American History: Tribute to Sojourner Truth
  • Ame and Ame Zion Churches in African American History
  • Black Slaveowners in African American History
  • Capitalism and Its Impact on African American History
  • Education of All Perspectives of the African American History
  • Changes Brewing for African American History
  • Exploring African American History: The Harlem Renaissance
  • Impact of the African American History on African Americans
  • The Concept of Freedom in African American History
  • How Does African American History Differ From Others
  • African American History and “Warmth of Other Suns”
  • How the 2008 Election Affected African American History
  • Irene Gomez-Leon: African American History
  • History of Black Wall Street ‘Little Africa’
  • African American History Before 1877: Main Events and Figures
  • Language Awareness: The N-Word in African American History
  • Slavery and Its Significance in the African American History
  • African American History During the Antebellum Period
  • The Impact of the Civil War on African American History
  • Analysis of Why African American History Is Important
  • African American History Figure: Matthew Alexander Henson
  • The Impact of Black Soldiers on American History
  • The Origins and Importance of Black History Month
  • Black Nationalism in African American History
  • Analysis of Arguments Against Black History Month
  • The Advantages and Disadvantages of Black History
  • Brief History of Black Males in American Society
  • Racism Enacted Throughout the History of Black Films
  • The History of Harlem – Cultural Epicenter of America’s Black Community
  • African American Youth and Their Lack of Interest in Black History Month
  • Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times
  • Underrated and Unwritten Black History Heroes: John Carlos and Tommie Smith
  • The Connotation of African-American History and Black History
  • Chicago (A-D)
  • Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, September 26). 55 African American History Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/african-american-history-essay-topics/

"55 African American History Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 26 Sept. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/african-american-history-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2023) '55 African American History Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 26 September.

IvyPanda . 2023. "55 African American History Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." September 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/african-american-history-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "55 African American History Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." September 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/african-american-history-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "55 African American History Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." September 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/african-american-history-essay-topics/.

  • Abraham Lincoln Topics
  • Black Lives Matter Topics
  • American Revolution Topics
  • Civil Rights Movement Questions
  • Apartheid Essay Topics
  • Discrimination Essay Titles
  • Colonization Essay Ideas
  • Civil War Titles
  • Federalism Research Ideas
  • Colonialism Essay Ideas
  • History Topics
  • Slavery Ideas
  • Hard Work Research Topics
  • Human Trafficking Titles
  • Native American Questions

Black History Month Five Paragraph Essay

Show preview image 1

Description

Questions & answers, the writer's block.

  • We're hiring
  • Help & FAQ
  • Privacy policy
  • Student privacy
  • Terms of service
  • Tell us what you think
  • AACOM Communities
  • AACOM Store

Black History Month 2024 Reading List

Published February 13, 2024

Black History Month Graphic

Health and Medicine

Just health: treating structural racism to heal america.

Timely and accessible,  Just Health  examines how deep structural racism embedded in the fabric of American society leads to worse health outcomes and lower life expectancy for people of color. By presenting evidence of discrimination in housing, education, employment and the criminal justice system,  Dayna Bowen Matthew  shows how racial inequality pervades American society and the multitude of ways that this undermines the health of minority populations. 

Just Medicine

Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care

Health disparities have remained stubbornly entrenched in the American healthcare system—and in Just Medicine Dayna Bowen Matthew finds that they principally arise from unconscious racial and ethnic biases held by physicians, institutional providers and their patients. Because we have missed this fact, the money we spend on training providers to become culturally competent, expanding wellness education programs and community health centers and even expanding access to health insurance will have only a modest effect on reducing health disparities. 

Killing the Black Body

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body exposed America's systemic abuse of Black women's bodies. From slave masters' economic stake in bonded women's fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s, these abuses pointed to the degradation of Black motherhood—and the exclusion of Black women's reproductive needs in mainstream feminist and civil rights agendas.

Madness

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

In Madness , Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family's experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations. In Madness , Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people's bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system.

Maladies of Empire

Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine

Reexamining the foundations of modern medicine, Jim Downs shows that the study of infectious disease depended crucially on the unrecognized contributions of nonconsenting subjects—conscripted soldiers, enslaved people and subjects of empire. Military doctors learned about the importance of air quality by monitoring Africans confined to the bottom of slave ships. Statisticians charted cholera outbreaks by surveilling Muslims in British-dominated territories returning from their annual pilgrimage. The field hospitals of the Crimean War and the U.S. Civil War were carefully observed experiments in disease transmission. The scientific knowledge derived from discarding and exploiting human life is now the basis of our ability to protect humanity from epidemics. Boldly argued and eye-opening, Maladies of Empire gives a full account of the true price of medical progress.

Masters of Health

Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be viable as experimental subjects, as cadavers and for use in the training of medical students. By taking a hard look at the racial ideas of both northern and southern medical schools, Christopher D. E. Willoughby reveals that racist ideas were not external to the medical profession but fundamental to medical knowledge. In this history of racial thinking and slavery in American medical schools, the founders and early faculty of these schools emerge as singularly influential proponents of white supremacist racial science. In documenting these practices Masters of Health charts the rise of racist theories in U.S. medical schools, throwing new light on the extensive legacies of slavery in modern medicine.

Out in the Rural

Out in the Rural: A Mississippi Health Center and Its War on Poverty

Out in the Rural is the unlikely story of the Tufts-Delta Health Center, which in 1966 opened in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, to become the first rural community health center in the United States. Its goal was simple: to provide healthcare and outreach to the region's thousands of rural poor, most of them Black sharecroppers who had lived without any medical resources for generations. In Out in the Rural , historian Thomas J. Ward explores the health center's story alongside the remarkable life of its founder, Dr. H. Jack Geiger. In addition to providing medical care, the staff of the Tufts-Delta Health Center worked upstream to address the fundamental determinants of health—factors such as education, poverty, nutrition and the environment—and ask the question, "What does it take to stay healthy?" Equal parts social history and personal history, Out in the Rural is a story of both community health and of a stranger's kindness and determination to bring healthcare to areas out of reach.

Pregnant While Black

Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America

Despite medical advances over the last twenty years, for Black women, the overwhelming dangers of carrying and delivering children remain and it only seems to be getting worse. In  Pregnant While Black ,  Dr. Monique Rainford  begins the work of "repairing the damage of the past" with an examination of the conditions that plague Black pregnancies. This important book carries the hopes and dreams of a generation looking to effect change, here and now.

Sickening

Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States

From the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis—and even the life-threatening childbirth experience for tennis star Serena Williams—author Anne Pollock takes readers on a journey through the diversity of anti-Black racism operating in healthcare. She goes beneath the surface to deconstruct the structures that make these events possible, including mass incarceration, police brutality and the hypervisibility of Black athletes' bodies. Ultimately, Sickening shows what these shocking events reveal about the everyday racialization of health in the United States.

Sick from Freedom

Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction

In Sick from Freedom , Jim Downs recovers the untold story of one of the bitterest ironies in American history—that the emancipation of the slaves, seen as one of the great turning points in U.S. history, had devastating consequences for innumerable freed people. With emancipation, African Americans seized the chance to move, migrating as never before. But in their journey to freedom, they also encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition and exposure. The widespread medical calamity sparked by emancipation is an overlooked episode of the Civil War and its aftermath.

The Black Angels

The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

In the pre-antibiotic days when tuberculosis stirred people's darkest fears, killing one in seven, white nurses at Sea View, New York's largest municipal hospital, began quitting en masse. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island, yet again confronting racism and consigned to a woefully understaffed sanatorium, dubbed "the pest house," where it was said that "no one left alive." But despite their major role in desegregating the New York City hospital system—and their vital work in helping to find the cure for tuberculosis at Sea View—these nurses were completely erased from history. Maria Smilios’ The Black Angels recovers the voices of these extraordinary women and puts them at the center of this riveting story, celebrating their legacy and spirit of survival.

The Bodies Keep Coming

The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal

As a Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Brian H. Williams learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow the rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, Williams tried to save the lives of police officers shot in Dallas in the deadliest incident for U.S. law enforcement since 9/11. Thrust into the spotlight in a nation that loves feel-good stories about heroism more than hard truths about racism, Williams came to rethink everything he thought he knew about medicine, injustice and what true healing looks like.

The Invisible Ache

The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power

Early in his career, actor Courtney B. Vance lost his father to suicide. Recently, he lost his godson to the same fate. Still, as mental health discourse hits the mainstream, it leaves the most vulnerable out of the conversation: Black men. In America, we teach that strength means holding back tears and shaming your own feelings. In the Black community, these pressures are especially poignant. Poor mental health outcomes—including diagnoses of depression and anxiety, reliance on prescription drugs and suicide—have skyrocketed in the past decade. Institutionalized racism, microagressions and stress caused by socioeconomic factors have led Black individuals to face worse mental health outcomes than any other demographic. In this book, Courtney B. Vance, along with professional expertise from famed psychologist Dr. Robin L. Smith , seek to change this trajectory.

White Coat Clenched Fist

White Coat, Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician

In the sixties, Fitzhugh Mullan was an activist in the civil rights struggle. While in medical school, Mullan was shocked by gaps in what the students learned, and the lack of humanity in the classroom. Later, Dr. Mullan was outraged at the conditions he discovered when he began to practice. He helped found the Student Health Organization, organized the Controversial Medical Collective at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx and struggled to offer improved medical care to those who needed it most and could afford it least. This landmark book charts the state of medical school and practices in the 1960s and 70s. This new edition is updated with a preface in which Dr. Mullan reflects on the changes in the medical field over the last thirty-plus years.

Education and Empowerment

Education and Empowerment: The Essential Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois

This selection of W.E.B. Du Bois' writings is divided into three sections. The first contains the writings of an adolescent Du Bois, who even at the age of fifteen, had the vision to encourage the people of his hometown to engage in literacy activities and to increase their political awareness. The second contains the works that led to Du Bois earning his Harvard doctorate, including a tersely worded letter to former President Rutherford B. Hayes when it appeared that Du Bois might have initially been denied a fellowship. The third includes writings where Du Bois assumed a more combative posture, but in doing so displayed the fire and passion that made him a most influential educational thinker.

From Equity Talk to Equity Walk

From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education

From Equity Talk to Equity Walk offers practical guidance on the design and application of campus change strategies for achieving equitable outcomes. Drawing from campus-based research projects sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, this invaluable resource provides real-world steps that reinforce primary elements for examining equity in student achievement, while challenging educators to specifically focus on racial equity as a critical lens for institutional and systemic change.

Understanding Racism

Black Like Me

Black Like Me

In the Deep South of the 1950s, a color line was etched in blood across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross that line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed Black man. What happened to John Howard Griffin—from the outside and within himself—as he made his way through the segregated Deep South is recorded in this searing work of nonfiction. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity every American must read.

Caste

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents argues that America operates on a rigid caste system, similar to India and Nazi Germany, but based on race. This hidden social hierarchy, she asserts, is far more influential than class or racism in shaping life outcomes, health and even perceptions of self-worth. Through personal stories and historical analysis, Wilkerson exposes the "pillars" upholding this system and calls for acknowledging its existence as a crucial step towards dismantling its damaging effects on American society.

Stony the Road

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African American experience, seeks to answer that question. An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth.

This Will Be My Undoing

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

Morgan Jerkins takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to "be"—to live as, to exist as—a Black woman today? This is a book about Black women, but it's necessary reading for all Americans. Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, Black women are objectified, silenced and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country's larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural and historical story of Black female oppression that influences the Black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.

Whos Black and Why

Who's Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race

In 1739 Bordeaux's Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of "blackness." Sixteen essays, written in French and Latin, were ultimately dispatched from all over Europe. Documented on each page are European ideas about who is Black and why. Looming behind these essays is the fact that some four million Africans had been kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic by the time the contest was announced. All the submissions circulate around a common theme: the search for a scientific understanding of the new concept of race. More important, they provide an indispensable record of the Enlightenment-era thinking that normalized the sale and enslavement of Black human beings. Translated into English and accompanied by a detailed introduction and headnotes written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Andrew Curran , each essay included in this volume lays bare the origins of anti-Black racism and colorism in the West.

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to discuss racial issues? Beverly Daniel Tatum , a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about communicating across racial and ethnic divides and pursuing antiracism.

Autobiographies

A Narrative of the Life and Adventure of Venture

A Narrative of the Life and Adventure of Venture

Written while Venture Smith was living in freedom on his own farm in Connecticut, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture is recognized by scholars as a pioneering work of African American nonfiction and one of the earliest known slave narratives in American history. Upon arrival in the British colony, Smith was put to work in the Mumford household, gaining the trust of his enslaver while enduring the abuses of Mumford's young son. At 22, he married Meg, a fellow enslaved woman, and was soon swept up in an escape attempt with an Irish indentured servant. Betrayed at Montauk Point by the Irishman, separated from his wife and daughter and subjected to worse abuses than before, Smith sought to gain his freedom by any means necessary.

Assata An Autobiography

Assata: An Autobiography

On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard ) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to defame, infiltrate and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder. This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. 

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

The true story of an individual's struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North. Written and published in 1861 after Jacobs' harrowing escape from a vile and predatory master, the memoir delivers a powerful and unflinching portrayal of the abuses and hypocrisy of the master-slave relationship.

Essays, Fiction and Poetry

Americanah

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah , Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman, navigates love, identity and race across continents. Immigrating to the United States for college, she confronts racial realities unseen in Nigeria, chronicling them in a popular blog. Meanwhile, her first love Obinze struggles with visa rejections and builds a different life back home. Years later, their paths converge again, forcing them to confront past choices and redefine love amidst shifting circumstances, both personal and societal, highlighting the complexities of diasporic experiences.

Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, but everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good. With five starred reviews, Tomi Adeyemi's West African-inspired fantasy debut, and instant #1 New York Times Bestseller, conjures a world of magic and danger.

Complete Writings

Complete Writings

In 1761, a young girl arrived in Boston on a slave ship, was sold to the Wheatley family and given the name Phillis Wheatley . Struck by Phillis' extraordinary precociousness, the Wheatleys provided her with an education that was unusual for a woman of the time and astonishing for a slave. After studying English and classical literature, geography, the Bible and Latin, Phillis published her first poem in 1767 at the age of 14, winning much public attention and considerable fame. When Boston publishers who doubted its authenticity rejected an initial collection of her poetry, Wheatley sailed to London in 1773 and found a publisher there for Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral . This volume collects both Wheatley's letters and her poetry, including a poignant plea to the Earl of Dartmouth urging freedom for America and comparing the country's condition to her own.

Homegoing

Ghana, eighteenth century: two half-sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle and sold into slavery. Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations. Yaa Gyasi's extraordinary novel illuminates slavery's troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.

The Book of More Delights

The Book of (More) Delights: Essays

In essays that can be at once intimate and political, Ross Gay shows us why he has made the subject of Black joy his own. Even as he practices delight, he doesn’t shy away from complexities of racism in America or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything else, though, Gay reveals the beauty of the natural world—the garden, the orchard, the flowers emerging from cracks in the sidewalk, the elegant movements of geese tending to their goslings and the trillion mysteries of this glorious earth.

AACOM thanks Aisha Ali, MHRM, research analyst, AACOM; Carley Andrew, Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine; Renee J. Crawford, DO, chief resident, Phoenix Children’s Pediatric Residency Program Alliance; Laura Gonzalez, digital marketing coordinator, California Health Sciences University; Alexis Mbakwe, MS, OMS IV, West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine; Shatae Mullins, LPC, behavioral health and diversity specialist, Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine; Marcine Pickron-Davis, PhD, chief diversity and community relations officer, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine; and Linda Solis, PhD, associate professor of applied humanities, University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine, for sharing these recommendations.

Anything we missed? Share what you’re reading this year by tagging us on Twitter/X at @AACOMmunities .

Related Content

  • Students Place in American Muslim Medical Student Association Poster Contest, Host Mini Medical School, Overcome Cancer While in Medical School and More
  • Students Assist Louisiana Marathon, Expand a Medical Spanish Course Nationwide, Improve Phone Habits and More
  • Hózhó and Holistic Well-Being: Native American Heritage Month from an OME Perspective

IMAGES

  1. Black History Month 5 Paragraph Essay Activity

    5 paragraph essay on black history month

  2. Black History Month 5 paragraph essay assignment by SCHIFF STUFF

    5 paragraph essay on black history month

  3. Free essay on black history month

    5 paragraph essay on black history month

  4. Narrative essay: Black history month essay example

    5 paragraph essay on black history month

  5. Black History Month 5 paragraph essay assignment by SCHIFF STUFF

    5 paragraph essay on black history month

  6. Whiz Kid: Black History Month Essay Winners

    5 paragraph essay on black history month

VIDEO

  1. Instructions for 5 paragraph essay

COMMENTS

  1. Black History Month: The Importance of Knowing African American History

    Updated: 1 December, 2023 Black history month is an important time to celebrate Black people. The history of African Americans is not taught enough. There are many ways to educate society about the experiences that African Americans endured.

  2. Black History Month 2024: Facts, Theme & Origins

    Today, Black History Month is a time to honor the contributions and legacy of African Americans across U.S. history and society—from activists and civil rights pioneers such as Harriet Tubman,...

  3. Black History Month

    Black History Month, monthlong commemoration of African American history and achievement that takes place each February in the United States.

  4. Here's the story behind Black History Month

    At the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, African Americans carry placards demanding equal rights, integrated schools, decent housing and an end to bias. Every February, the U.S. honors the ...

  5. Black History Month: What is it and why do we need it?

    Economic Progress Black History Month: What is it and why is it important? Feb 7, 2024 Black History Month is an opportunity to understand Black histories. Image: Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko Alem Tedeneke Media Lead, Canada, Latin America and Sustainable Development Goals, World Economic Forum Our Impact What's the World Economic Forum doing to

  6. Black History Month 2024: African Americans and the Arts

    Carter G. Woodson dedicated his life to teaching Black History and incorporating the subject of Black History in schools. He co-founded what is now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. (ASALH). In February 1926, Woodson launched the first Negro History Week, which has since been expanded into Black History Month.

  7. Black History Month: What is it and why does it matter?

    October marks Black History Month in the UK. The event began in the US in the 1920s, and was first celebrated in the UK in 1987. It also takes place in Canada, Germany and Ireland. In the UK ...

  8. Celebrating Black History With The New York Times

    These projects explore Black history in depth and from a variety of angles — connecting history to the present. Sanitation workers prepared to demonstrate on March 28, 1968, as part of a labor ...

  9. The Meaning of Black History Month

    In honor of Black History Month, we are highlighting the voices and perspectives of Black UW-Madison leaders, Kia Hunter and Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara. The calendar turning to February marks the beginning of Black History Month, offering us all the time to reflect on African American history, celebrate Black achievements and acknowledge these ...

  10. How did Black History Month come to be?

    It was Carter G. Woodson, a founder of the Association for the Study of African American History, who first came up with the idea of the celebration that became Black History Month.Woodson, the son of recently freed Virginia slaves, who went on to earn a Ph.D in history from Harvard, originally came up with the idea of Negro History Week to encourage Black Americans to become more interested ...

  11. Black History Month: Why we celebrate it in February : NPR

    The annual celebration started out in 1926 as Negro History Week and expanded to Black History Month in the 1970s. This year celebrates "African Americans and the Arts."

  12. Black History Month Is About Seeing America Clearly

    This version of Black history endeavors to show Black capability and challenge stereotypes. The lesson is clear: If this Black person from history overcame racism, so could we. With enough grit ...

  13. Black History Month

    The week-long event officially became Black History Month in 1976 when U.S. president Gerald Ford extended the recognition to "honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.". Black History Month has been celebrated in the United States every February since.

  14. Black History Month Essay Topics

    Grace Fleming Updated on March 17, 2017 Black history is full of fascinating stories, rich culture, great art, and courageous acts that were undertaken within unthinkable circumstances. While Civil Rights events are the most common themes in our studies, we should resist equating Black history only with Civil Rights-era history.

  15. Personal Essays on Black History Month

    With Black History Month upon us, I'm mindful of the students, scholars, activists and ordinary citizens who found the courage to remain determined and engaged in the midst of great challenges, vulnerability and danger in order to demand basic human dignity and racial justice.

  16. Black History Month @ GCC: BHM Texts & Essays

    About this Essay: Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. About this project: The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in ...

  17. Black History Month Resources

    Students, make your voice heard this Black History Month with our museum. Join us in exploring stories of African Americans in the Arts throughout February, with a special focus on art as a platform for social justice around five weekly focus areas: literature and poetry, performing art, visual art, music and digital art.

  18. Black History Month Project

    This black history month research project includes: a graphic organizer to help students research their African American hero. a 4 paragraph scaffolded rough draft to help students be successful with informational writing. a 5 paragraph scaffolded rough draft to help with differentiation. a revising and editing sheet for their black history ...

  19. Black History: Facts, People & Month

    Black history is the story of African Americans in the United States and elsewhere. Learn about Black History Month, Black leaders, the Great Migration, the civil rights movement and more.

  20. 5 Paragraph Essay: Celebrating Black History Month

    5 Paragraph Essay: Celebrating Black History Month 90 Words 1 Page February is not only the month of hearts, we also celebrate Black History Month. In Hollywood News Source, we always aim to include diverse voices. We believe that books are significant platform in embracing visibility.

  21. Black History Essay Topics

    5 Paragraph Essay: Celebrating Black History Month February is not only the month of hearts, we also celebrate Black History Month.

  22. Black History Month: How it started and why it's in February

    "Black History Month is in the shortest month of the year, and the coldest," comedian Chris Rock said in 2015. "Just in case we want to have a parade." Although at least February has an extra day ...

  23. Free Black History Month Essays

    Black History Month is the payment of the tribute towards the centennial issues that America failed to solve and now, when a week celebration grew into a month parade of the self-exposure it is even more obvious that this holiday brings more harm than good to the society than benefits.

  24. 55 African American History Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

    History of African Americans. The readings that are going to be discussed in the paper tell the history of African Americans, their struggles for civil rights, and their integration into the social and political life of the country. We will write. a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts.

  25. Black History Month Five Paragraph Essay

    2 Q&A More from The Writer's Block Description Black History Month is an excellent time to explore the heritage, culture and contributions of African Americans. The five paragraph essay provides a format to practice the writing process and research skills. Total Pages Answer Key N/A Teaching Duration 1 Week Report this resource to TPT

  26. Black History Month 2024 Reading List

    Black History Month 2024 Reading List. Published February 13, 2024 ... In 1739 Bordeaux's Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of "blackness." ... Documented on each page are European ideas about who is Black and why. Looming behind these essays is the fact that some four million Africans had been ...

  27. Black History Month

    Johnstown, PA (15901) Today. Cloudy. Snow likely this afternoon. Temps nearly steady in the mid 30s.

  28. Black History Month essays

    Johnstown, PA (15901) Today. Generally cloudy. High 48F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight