45 Black History Month Activities
December 5, 2024
In 1915, historian and author Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Today, that association is known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). And it was Woodson and his organization that initiated the first observances that would eventually become Black History Month. In February of 1926, Woodson and his organization created Negro History Week, chosen in the week in February that included the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two Americans who were integral in securing civil rights for Black Americans (Scroll down for Black History Month Activities).
In 1975, President Gerald Ford acknowledged the importance of celebrating what was then still Black History Week, when he said that it was important that Americans “recognize the important contribution made to our nation’s life and culture by black citizens.”
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The next year, in 1976, ASALH expanded their observance from Black History Week to Black History Month, which we celebrate to this day. How did it happen?
“In 1986, Congress passed Public Law 99-244, which designated February 1986 as ‘National Black (Afro-American) History Month,’” according to the Library of Congress. The law marked “the beginning of the sixtieth annual public and private salute to Black History,” and directed the president to issue a proclamation calling on the American people to observe February as Black History Month. President Ronald Reagan did issue that proclamation, which states that “the foremost purpose of Black History Month is to make all Americans aware of this struggle for freedom and equal opportunity.” The proclamation also states that the month was a time “to celebrate the many achievements of African Americans in every field from science and the arts to politics and religion.”
With that in mind, how can you most successfully celebrate Black History Month, lifting up the achievements of Black Americans while also acknowledging the ongoing struggle for freedom and equal opportunity? We’ve got some ideas for you at every age level.
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ASALH also provides an annual theme for Black History Month that can help to guide your lesson planning. The 2025 theme is African Americans and Labor. ASALH writes that the theme “focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people.” They go on to say, “Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture.”
Preschool Black History Month Activities
1) Read children’s books to your students
Colorful departures into the lives of friendly characters can help to celebrate Black History Month with young students. PBS hosts a comprehensive list of children’s books to help celebrate the month.
2) Celebrate the accomplishments of Black Americans
This is great at any age, but young children can particularly appreciate the things in their tangible world. This list of inventions by Black Americans will help your students see their world in a whole new way.
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3) Quote of the day
Writers like Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin are often thought of as the authors of literary masterpieces. But their famous sentences—and quotes from other Black writers—can help inspire your young students in February.
4) Rock ‘n’ Roll Party
Did you know that Rock ‘n’ Roll can trace its origins to Black musicians? This timeline of African American music can inspire you to put on some tunes for a little dance party that celebrates Black musicians. This short video about Sister Rosetta Sharpe can teach you and your students even more about the origins of rock.
5) Jazz Club
The same thing goes for jazz music. Why not get the music teacher involved and showcase some of the innovations in jazz by Black artists like Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong?
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6) Early Spirituals
Keep the music teacher in your classroom and break out sticks and small drums to teach children rhythm and the importance of spirituals sung by enslaved people fighting for their freedom. This page from the Library of Congress can help give you more context that you can translate into digestible information for your students.
7) Black Food History
Teaching young students about the influence of Black Americans on their everyday world can go a long way to helping them understand the complex context of the world in which we live. This site about Black Foodways and Cuisine contains easily “consumable” information about food that your students might see in their everyday lives.
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8) Coloring to visualize
Crayola offers this page of free printable coloring pages of influential Black Americans to celebrate Black History Month. It’s the perfect way to spur creativity and get students visualizing the people who have contributed so much to American life.
9) Look at famous photos, practice taking them
Dive into a fun activity by looking at the photographs of noteworthy and impacting Black photographers and ask them to tell you what they see in the photos. Then break out some disposable cameras and give students the chance to take their own photos inside or outside of the classroom. Take the photos to get developed and then celebrate your students’ work by recalling the photos of the professionals you had looked at before.
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10) Tumble like Simone! Swing like Serena! Run like Sha’Carri!
Three of the most influential athletes in our current moment are Black women. Simone Biles, Serena Williams, and Sha’Carri Richardson are all athletic powerhouses in their sports. Plan an afternoon activity—outside or inside—where you introduce students to these amazing athletes, then let them tumble, swing a tennis racket, and run fast just like Simone, Serena, and Sha’Carri.
Elementary Black History Month Activities
11) Get the basics down
Introduce students to the basic story of Black History Day with information from the Library of Congress.
12) Explore some more nuanced facts
There are easy ways to conflate different concepts and ideas around race in America. Setting down some basic facts about Black History Month can help even elementary school age students to understand the nuances of our world.
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13) Your Town’s History
Bring Black History Month home by investigating and prepping a lesson about your town’s or region’s contributions to Black history. Is there a spot that was on the Underground Railroad? The home of an influential person in history? A museum? Plan a field trip!
14) Take music history to the next level
Elevate the activities from the preschool level to the elementary school level. Your students will be able to handle a video about Sister Rosetta Sharpe—and some of them might even play guitar. They’ll have more of an attention span to listen to some individual songs. Bringing in some guitars and the music teacher can help students to see how challenging and revolutionary the work of Sharpe was. Show them how current artists have acknowledged Black Americans’ contributions to their own work.
15) Cover the classroom in Black art
Find and print out poster-sized recreations of paintings, photographs, and other art by famous Black artists. Introduce them to the art pieces one by one. Then, get students active by having them decorate the room with those posters. Keep them there for the whole month (or the whole year!) to give students the chance to see the art over the course of time.
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16) Explore famous Black scientists
Give students a lesson on famous Black scientists. Plan to recreate a simplified version of one of their experiments.
17) Hidden Figures
Read your students Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race.
18) Reflect on Hidden Figures and Visible Figures
Jumping off from the reading of Hidden Figures, have students consider the history that we commonly learn about the space race (which you’ve perhaps already covered in class). Ask them to reflect in a journal entry: why are some “figures” hidden and some more visible? What are the most visible things in their lives? Do they think there could be “hidden figures” behind other parts of history? Other parts of their lives?
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19) Celebrate Black Mathematicians
Take time during math class to celebrate a different influential Black mathematician at the start of every day during Black History Month.
20) Explore the 1619 Project for Grades 2–6.
The Pulitzer Center and the 1619 Project have teamed up together to help teachers guide students through lessons on enslavement and resistance with information and lessons that meet them at their learning level.
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21) “I Have a Dream”
Introduce students to Martin Luther King, Jr., and his famous “I Have a Dream” speech by reading them the children’s book designed to do just that.
22) Read The Undefeated
This 2020 winner of the Caldecott Medal is a picture book for ages 4-8 that is a love letter to Black life in America.
Middle School Black History Month Activities
23) Follow the Drinking Gourd
“Follow the Drinking Gourd” is a song that is often misunderstood. Teaching the history of the song to students can help them put the music and the history in context. There are lots of sources that can help you teach the song, but the National Parks Service has an easy one-page explainer to get you started. This teacher’s guide also includes an excerpted history of the song that goes into greater detail about the history of this well-known song.
24) Practice researching by finding famous Black innovators
Since the 2025 theme is about labor, you can get students working on their own to practice their research and information literacy skills. Have them work in small groups to find three credible sources about a Black inventor or innovator. Then, have the group read those sources and present their information to the class.
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25) Labor and the creation of the nation
Give students a lesson on the way that the labor of enslaved people helped create the economic prosperity of the south. Then, have them connect the dots between something they use in their everyday life and the work done by enslaved people in the early part of American history.
26) Picturing the Unseen
This fascinating lesson plan is directed at middle school students and helps them to “research significant and often overlooked moments of American history and communicate their findings through art by creating data visualizations.”
27) Resilience, Power, and Pride
This lesson plan about resilience, power, and pride, is directed specifically at elementary and middle school students. The goal of this lesson plan is to have students “explore texts and multimedia sources to evaluate the role of abolitionists from the Middle Passage to current day and identify as future abolitionists through journalism and civic engagement.”
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28) Create an encyclopedia of Black Leaders
Give students a research day to pour through different resources and create a classroom-wide encyclopedia of Black leaders.
29) Watch Ruby Bridges
This PG-rated film from 1996 chronicles the story of Ruby Bridges, the first African American to integrate her elementary school.
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30) Ruby Bridge Meditative Walk
After watching the film, ask students to write a reflection on what it would be like to not be able to enter their school because of the color of their skin. Invite students to come outside of the front doors of the school and then reenter, silently, thinking to themselves about the scenes from the film and how it might have felt.
31) Reflections on the Quote of the Day
Go beyond simply inspiring students with a quote of the day from a Black leader or writer. Have them spend five minutes journaling on those quotes at the start of each day. At the end of the week, ask students to get into small groups to share the reflections that were most important to them.
High School Black History Month Activities
32) The Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh
This famous text from scholar Peggy McIntosh helps students approach and understand the privilege of “carrying less” and the burden of “carrying more” in the invisible knapsacks that we all carry as a part of society. This page from the National SEED Project explains McIntosh’s argument and contains a downloadable PDF with facilitator notes to help you guide students through this unforgettable activity.
33) Plan a concert
Working at the school-wide level, plan a concert of local Black musicians who can introduce students to their work while teachers (and/or the musicians, too) give students chunks of historical context. What better way to celebrate than with some dancing and free time to enjoy the music?
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34) Black Influencers
Give students a little time to engage with social media. Have them research and compile a list of Black influencers who are doing something positive to uplift the community. They could be artists, activists, musicians, actors, scholars, designers—anyone who’s working to put their work positively in the world. Have students work as individuals or in groups. Then have them present their favorite influencers to the class to give everyone an idea of what’s happening online.
35) Explore Black Wall Street
Again, in light of the labor theme, check out this curriculum about Black Wall Street. Introduce your students to this often overlooked history. There is an option for a 10-day curriculum that culminates in performance projects that create opportunities for formative assessment.
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36) Paying Tribute
Are there memorials to the achievements of Black Americans in your town? Take a field trip to the memorials or monuments. Then, engage this curriculum about paying tribute, and have students analyze the nature of the ways in which societies commemorate the history of Black Americans.
37) Explore the legacy of slavery in healthcare
This lesson plan helps students understand and unpack the history of slavery in the U.S. healthcare system—and how it still affects people today.
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38) Celebrate Blackness as a superpower
This lesson plan helps students to “analyze and explore how Black consciousness, Black genius, and Black ways of being (historical, social, spiritual, societal practices, etc.) were foundational to the creation of the United States and the construction of American national identity.”
39) Teach, analyze, write about “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s influential essay, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is a challenging but accessible text for later high school students. Read the letter together.
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40) Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
Read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man together. The book will be challenging but accessible for older high school students.
41) Read the classics of Toni Morrison
Beloved. Sula. The Bluest Eye. Whatever fits your curriculum, you really can’t go wrong exploring Morrison’s art.
42) Weekly Poem
Choose a different poem by a different Black author to start each week. You can continue this through the whole semester!
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43) Black Owned Businesses
Do you have Black business owners in your community who would be willing to come to your class to talk about their experiences as entrepreneurs? Bring them in for a talk, a Q&A, and activities with your students.
44) Black English
Dispel misinformation about Black English and the people who speak it with this lesson plan aimed at high school students.
45) Commodities, Contributions, and Compensation
In this lesson plan that speaks directly to the theme of labor, students examine “how the forced labor of enslaved Black Americans was a commodity in establishing U.S. wealth and success; explore their contributions to the formation of American democracy; and examine arguments for and against reparations.”
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