Black History Month: Teaching & Online Resources

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

Featured lessons and websites documenting African American History.

The National Park Service celebrates African American Heritage throughout the year. Visit a multitude of park sites dedicated to African American history and culture. View Museum exhibits, go on a travel intineary, or read indepth histories and interviews of famous African Americans and how they shaped the United States.

Statistical information from the US Census Bureau.

Opened on the banks of the Ohio River in Cincinnati in 2004, the mission of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is to reveal stories of freedom’s heroes, from the era of the Underground Railroad to contemporary times, challenging and inspiring everyone to take courageous steps of freedom today. A history museum with more than 100,000 visitors annually, it serves to inspire modern abolition through connecting the lessons of the Underground Railroad with today’s freedom fighters. The center is also a convener of dialogue on freedom and human rights.

African Journals OnLine (AJOL) is the world's largest and pre-eminent collection of peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals. Historically, scholarly information has flowed from North to South and from West to East. It has also been difficult for African researchers to access the work of other African academics. In partnership with hundreds of journals from all over the continent, AJOL works to change this, so that African-origin research output is available to Africans and to the rest of the world.

To help you integrate Black History Month into your classroom, a selection of lesson plans that cover a variety subjects and that can be adapted to fit multiple grade levels.

A comprehensive collection of free NEH-supported, vetted websites and EDSITEment-developed lessons on African American history and literature arranged roughly by historical period. These resources help bridge the gap between the expanding academic scholarship of the black experience and the need for this history to be more widely taught at the K–12 level.

Includes lesson plans, primary sources and additional materials.

13,000 page reference center is dedicated to providing information to the general public on African American history and on the history of the more than one billion people of African ancestry around the world.

Innovative tech tools for exploring Black History Month.

Engaging activities ranked by teachers, for teachers.