10 Must-See Landmarks of Black History

Around a century before the Underground Railroad helped enslaved people escape north, a bastion of freedom existed for those who fled further south, converted to Catholicism and pledged allegiance to the Spanish crown. Built in 1738 on the edge of St. Augustine, Florida, Fort Mosé fit approximately 100 people within its earthen walls as the first legally sanctioned free Black community in North America. Following a destructive clash with the British in 1740, Fort Mosé was rebuilt 12 years later.

In 1763, Spain ceded Florida to Britian, and the community feared being reenslaved, says Kim Main of the Fort Mose Historical Society. “The king of Spain said, ‘No problem, you just come to Cuba,’” she explains. “All but three families went to Cuba; they were given a plot of land, they named it New St. Augustine.”

The British did not have a need for the abandoned fort. It was all but forgotten until the ruins were excavated in the 1980s. Today, you can see a re-creation of the original citadel at Fort Mose Historic State Park.

Formerly the grounds of a Native American market, this patch of Louis Armstrong Park in New Orleans’ historic Tremé neighborhood served as a popular and unique meeting site for local Black residents in the 19th century. Under the French colony’s Code Noir law, enslaved people were given Sundays off, allowing free and enslaved Black people to gather here to partake in traditional expressions of music, dancing and religion. Some enslaved people were able to buy their freedom by selling goods at these fairs. Meanwhile, the African music that sounded out here is considered an early influence on the birth of jazz. Known by many names over the years, “Congo Square” rose to the forefront in the 1880s and again in the 1970s, before becoming the area’s official name with the passage of a city ordinance in 2011.

Located at the spot where the transatlantic slave trade first reached the American colonies, Fort Monroe rose via enslaved and convict labor to become the nation’s largest stone fortification in the aftermath of the War of 1812. Later, the fort helped shape the course of the Civil War when three enslaved people sought asylum within the Union stronghold in 1861. Major General Benjamin F. Butler refused to return the refugees to their white owners, a decision that prompted an influx of escaped men, women and children to the area and a series of legislative acts that eventually led to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The imprisonment site of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Fort Monroe was designated a national monument shortly after being deactivated as an Army post in 2011.

Although not the only neighborhood to earn the moniker of “Black Wall Street,” the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, stood as perhaps the most spectacular example of a self-sustaining Black community in the first decades of the 20th century. Founded in 1906, Greenwood became a commercial success by necessity; its Black residents could not patronize white-only businesses elsewhere in the city. The legally sanctioned segregation left Black entrepreneurs to open up shop. Within 15 years, the district boasted its own newspapers, schools and post office, with the main drag of Greenwood Avenue lined with retailers, restaurants, hotels, nightclubs and the 750-seat Dreamland Theatre. Sadly, these emblems of prosperity were destroyed when Greenwood became ground zero for the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. After the devastation, many residents remained to help restore much of the district’s former luster.

In May 1905, Robert S. Abbott published 300 copies of the debut edition of the Chicago Defender from the kitchen of his landlord’s apartment. In 1920, with the circulation of his newspaper at 230,000 copies per week, Abbott moved his operations to a former synagogue in Chicago’s historic Bronzeville district. It remained there for the next 40 years. The Defender was already one of the nation’s most successful Black-owned newspapers by that point, famed for Abbott’s relentless promotion of the Great Migration and the Pullman Porters who distributed copies south of the Mason-Dixon line. Although its influence eventually waned, the Defender continues to reach readers with its digital-only presence.

Boston’s Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field are renowned as Major League Baseball’s two centenarian ballparks, but the nation’s oldest professional baseball stadium—Rickwood Field—endures from an era when Black players had to form their own teams and leagues. Opened in 1910 by industrialist Rick Woodward, Rickwood Field was initially the home of the white minor league Birmingham Barons before also taking on the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Southern League as tenants in 1920. The park subsequently became a stage for some of Black baseball’s greatest stars, with Satchel Paige and Willie Mays among the athletes who suited up for the Black Barons. Although Rickwood Field has not housed a professionally affiliated club since 1987, it remains in use by high school and college teams and even hosted a regular-season MLB game in June 2024.

Originally a burlesque theater, The Apollo Theater took on its more famous iteration after reopening in 1934. The Harlem Renaissance that gave the surrounding New York City neighborhood its vibrancy was then past its peak, but the spirit of artistic creation and celebration of Black culture remained very much alive within this venue on 125th Street. Including future titans like Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown and Aretha Franklin, many successful Black performers of the mid-20th century tested their chops in front of the notoriously enthusiastic and demanding Apollo audiences. Although financial difficulties forced the theater’s closure twice in the second half of the ’70s, The Apollo received landmark status and a lifeline from a private investment group early in the following decade. Today, under the management of the Apollo Theater Foundation nonprofit, it continues to showcase new and established acts.

Pressured to incorporate Black pilots into their ranks, the U.S. Army Air Corps designated the Tuskegee Institute as one of the training grounds for them. Moton Field became the basic training site for the first class of Black cadets in 1941; those who passed moved on to advanced aeronautics at Tuskegee Army Airfield. Nearly 1,000 pilots emerged from the Tuskegee flight program. Some graduates flew successful missions in Europe and North Africa, which, according to the National Park Service, paved the way for desegregating the U.S. military in 1948.

“They dispelled [the] stereotype that when the Black man reaches a certain altitude, his brain shrinks,” says John Swaine, CEO of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. “Once you see the performance of how they protect and how they serve the country with distinction, you have to go back and rethink your racism.”

Established as the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in 1998, Moton Field has since returned to its roots as a flight training base.

In September 1957, three years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision banned segregation in public schools, tensions over the uneven process of integration came to a head when the Arkansas National Guard blocked nine Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School. President Dwight Eisenhower then federalized the Arkansas Guardsmen and deployed the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to provide extra security when the students were finally admitted three weeks later. The “Little Rock Nine” still faced an uphill battle as classmates harassed and assaulted them throughout the year. Yet, the ultimate success of the standoff is apparent; Little Rock Central still educates students of all races and is part of a national historic site.

“Those nine students walked into a very hostile situation,” Swaine says, “and when you reflect on the history of Black and brown children learning together and what has come out of that, this was a very powerful moment to show the impact of educational opportunities that are open to all persons.”

On February 1, 1960, four Black college students were refused service at the whites-only lunch counter of the F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina. Still, they waited patiently. Their respectful defiance began what was perhaps the most effective sit-in of the Civil Rights Movement. The A&T Four, sometimes known as the Greensboro Four, returned in subsequent days flanked by a swelling group of reinforcements, spurring a movement that saw similar demonstrations in more than 30 places across 7 states by the end of February. News coverage of the movement, Swaine says, “helped let people up and down the eastern seaboard know what was happening at town after town after town.”

Hundreds of participants were arrested for disturbing the peace, yet the sit-ins produced positive changes in many places; the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro was integrated in July 1960 and is now a prominent feature of the city’s International Civil Rights Center & Museum.