Black History
African Americans have played a central role in shaping U.S. history. From slavery and its abolition to the Great Migration, the civil rights movement and military, scientific, cultural and political achievements, explore key moments, milestones, facts and figures in Black History.
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See important dates and facts about the African American experience.
Black inventors changed the way we live through their many innovations, from the traffic light to the ironing board.
From a bus boycott to Freedom Rides to a march for fair housing, here are seven events that triggered change.
Black History Month honors the contributions of African Americans to U.S. history. Learn about famous firsts in African American history and other little-known facts.
Black History Month
Black History Month
A brief look at the history of African Americans and Black History Month.
3 Key Movements in Black History
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George Washington Carver was an agricultural scientist and inventor who developed hundreds of products using peanuts and other crops.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in 1960 in the wake of student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters across the South and became the major channel of student participation in the civil rights movement.
The 1960 lunch counter protest led to integrated restaurants.
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was a civil rights activist who led the Niagara Movement and later helped form the NAACP.
After the United States abolished slavery, Black Americans continued to be marginalized through enforced segregated and diminished access to facilities, housing, education—and opportunities.
From the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2008 election of Barack Obama, to widespread global protests declaring Black Lives Matter in 2020, African American history in the United States has been filled with both triumph and strife.
The 15th Amendment gave Black men the right to vote, though that right was often denied by Jim Crow practices, local laws and threats.
The NAACP or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was established in 1909 and is America’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), founded in 1942, became one of the leading activist organizations in the early years of the American civil rights movement. In the early 1960s, CORE, working with other civil rights groups, launched a series of initiatives: the Freedom Rides, aimed at desegregating public facilities, the Freedom Summer voter registration project and the historic 1963 March on Washington.
See important dates and facts about the African American experience.
A. Philip Randolph was a labor leader and civil rights activist who founded the nation’s first major Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) in 1925.
Formation of Baseball’s Color Line As the expanding popularity of baseball in the United States led to the formation of amateur clubs in the second half of the 19th century, African Americans were among those joining the action. Records exist of an abbr...
Marcus Garvey was a Black nationalist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement, which sought to unify and empower people of African descent worldwide.
Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations. The Ku Klux Klan, police and state and local authorities carried out a series of violent attacks against the activists, including arson, beatings, false arrest and the murders of at least three people.
Madam C.J. Walker became a self-made millionaire and a noted philanthropist thanks to her successful line of homemade hair care products.
