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All of February in the United States, a month that includes the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and Frederick Douglass (February 14).
Plan the month as an extension of what you teach all year, not a bolt-on. Check ASALH's annual theme in January and choose figures beyond the most familiar names. Local archives, historical societies and HBCU collections are rich sources. Build toward student research presentations or a gallery walk, and keep Black history in your curriculum in March and beyond.
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Black History Month grew out of 'Negro History Week', launched in February 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which he co-founded in 1915. Woodson chose the second week of February because it included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, which Black communities already celebrated.
In 1976, during the nation's bicentennial, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month, urging Americans to 'seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans.' Today the organization Woodson founded, now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), announces a national theme each year.
Schools mark it because Black history is American history, and the month is a chance to deepen it, not contain it. Strong teaching covers struggle and resistance, but also science, invention, music, literature, sport, business and community life, and connects to the history of your own town or state.
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Focus on celebration, identity and community: Black authors, artists, musicians and inventors whose work children can see, hear and enjoy. Keep any mention of unfairness simple and hopeful.
Read joyful picture books by Black authors and illustrators, such as books by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Vashti Harrison or illustrator Bryan Collier, and talk about the pictures and characters.
Listen to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and move to the music, noticing fast, slow, loud and quiet sounds.
Explore simple inventions and improvements by Black inventors, such as Garrett Morgan's traffic signal, and play a traffic light game.
Look at the collages of Romare Bearden and create a cut-paper self-portrait or community picture.
Introduce real people and their achievements across many fields, and begin to explain that Black Americans were treated unfairly by some laws and worked together to change them. Emphasize courage, creativity and community.
Pairs research one person, such as Mae Jemison, Katherine Johnson, Jackie Robinson or Ruby Bridges, and make a simple fact card for a class wall.
Read about Ruby Bridges starting at an all-white school in 1960, then write about a time they were brave.
Learn how Carver studied crops such as peanuts and sweet potatoes to help farmers, then plant seeds and observe growth.
Hear how Katherine Johnson's calculations helped send astronauts into space, then solve a set of space-themed addition and subtraction problems.
Students can learn about slavery, emancipation, the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement with age-appropriate primary sources. Balance struggle with achievement, and research local Black history.
Use maps and primary sources to explore how freedom seekers escaped and who helped them, focusing on courage and networks rather than simulation.
Read Langston Hughes poems such as 'Dreams' and 'April Rain Song', discuss imagery and write a poem in a similar style.
Research figures such as Dr. Charles Drew (blood banks), Lonnie Johnson (Super Soaker) and Dr. Mae Jemison and present how their work changed lives.
Learn how Banneker calculated astronomical events and helped survey Washington, D.C., then work with measurement and time problems inspired by his almanac.
Middle schoolers can analyze the Reconstruction era, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement through primary sources, examining both systemic injustice and Black agency and achievement.
Analyze maps, data and Jacob Lawrence's 'Migration Series' paintings to explain why about six million Black Americans moved north and west between 1910 and 1970.
Read excerpts from 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?' (1852) and analyze Douglass's argument and use of rhetoric.
Study the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and evaluate how far they were enforced in the decades that followed.
Trace how blues, jazz, gospel, soul and hip-hop developed, listening for shared features and their influence on American music.
High school students can engage with historiography, primary sources and current debates: how Black history has been taught, whose stories are told and how the past shapes the present. Include economic, legal, scientific and cultural history.
Examine Greenwood's prosperity before 1921, the massacre and its long silence in textbooks, using primary sources from the 2001 Oklahoma Commission report.
Analyze work by Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes and discuss how they represented Black identity and modern life.
Compare Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), evaluating legal reasoning and the role of the NAACP's legal strategy.
Use historical redlining maps and current data on home ownership to analyze statistical relationships and discuss limits of the data.
A few things worth thinking about before you plan, so every child in the room feels included and the facts stay accurate.
Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in February 1926 because the week included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and Frederick Douglass (February 14), which Black communities already celebrated. It became a month-long observance, officially recognized by President Ford in 1976.
Keep the focus on celebration and achievement: books by Black authors, music, art and inventors whose work children can see in daily life. If you mention unfair treatment, keep it simple and emphasize how people worked together to make things fairer.
Try Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to hold a pilot's license; Dr. Charles Drew, a pioneer of blood banks; Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her bus seat before Rosa Parks; mathematician Dorothy Vaughan; and Black leaders from your own town's history.
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