Black Month History

What is Black History Month?

Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. Other countries around the world, including Canada and the United Kingdom, also devote a month to celebrating Black history.

Origins of Black History Month

The story of Black History Month begins in 1915, half a century after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States.
That September, the Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson and the prominent minister Jesse E. Moorland founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), an organization dedicated to researching and promoting achievements by Black Americans and other peoples of African descent.

Rosa Parks

Revered as a civil rights icon, Rosa Parks is best known for sparking the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, but her activism in the Black community predates that day. She joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943, 12 years before that fateful commute. In her first years in the organization, she worked specifically on criminal justice and its application in Alabama communities.
One part of this was protecting Black men from false accusations; the other was ensuring that Black people who had been sexually assaulted by white people could get their day in court. This particular issue was close to Parks’ heart as in 1931 a white male neighbor had attempted to assault her.

Barack Obama

Black America’s conception of ourselves was forever changed by Barack Obama’s presidency. For African Americans, the first family helped to unlock the transformational potential that always existed in democracy’s beating heart, but which too often excluded black Americans.
For eight extraordinary years, Obama and his poised, elegant and brilliant family occupied the domestic and world stage in a way that offered new models of excellence for millions of black children living in a society that continues to marginalize their hopes and dreams, accentuate their mistakes and errors, and place too little values on their lives or deaths.

Black History Month 2022 Theme

Since 1976, every American president has designated February as Black History Month and endorsed a specific theme.
The Black History Month 2022 theme, "Black Health and Wellness” explores "the legacy of not only Black scholars and medical practitioners in Western medicine, but also other ways of knowing (e.g., birthworkers, doulas, midwives, naturopaths, herbalists, etc.) throughout the African Diaspora. The 2022 theme considers activities, rituals and initiatives that Black communities have done to be well."