Black History Month is celebrated every February to honor the achievements of African Americans who have shaped American history. Historian Carter G. Woodson hoped to raise awareness of African American's contributions to civilization by establishing Negro History Week. The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that included both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass' birthdays. The week was later expanded to a month in 1976 during the United States bicentennial.
PHOTO: On March 20, 1969, Black hospital workers at the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston went on strike to protest the firing of twelve employees and to call for higher wages and union recognition.
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In 1916, Septima Clark was a young African American teacher looking forward to her first teaching assignment in South Carolina. There, she learned firsthand about the poverty and inequality in...
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Abolitionist Sarah Grimké was born into a wealthy slaveholding Charleston family in 1792. After experiencing the injustices of slavery firsthand, she became a noted speaker for the antislavery...
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Educator Mary McLeod Bethune began a school for needy African Americans in 1904 with $1.50, five students, and a passion to teach. Her school became Bethune-Cookman College and currently has over 2...
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Born a slave, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom and became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. As a conductor, she helped over 300 slaves find their own freedom. After the Civil War, she cared...
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The Civil Rights Movement has been part of an ongoing struggle since enslaved Africans were first brought to America. The modern Civil Rights Movement began in the 1940s and many changes had taken...
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The Friendship Nine consisted of students from Friendship Junior College. These students are best known for their historic one-mile walk from Friendship Junior College to McCrory’s Variety Store on...
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On January 31, 1961, civil rights history was made in South Carolina. African American students from Friendship Junior College walked a mile to stage a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter on Main...
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February 1-28 February is Black History Month Black History Month is celebrated every February to honor the achievements of African Americans who have shaped American history. The idea was started in...
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In this lesson, students view video clips from the film Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise covering the strengths and weaknesses of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, as well as the impact of the...
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The setting for her first book, Clover, is a peach farm like the one Dori Sanders grew up on. Clover was published in 1990 and immediately became a best-seller. In the story, Clover is a 10-year-old...
