Long before Black History Month became a full celebration, it began as a simple week. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a scholar and historian, established Black History Month in 1926 as a week-long celebration called Negro History Week to honor Black Americans’ contributions. Fifty years later in 1976, President Gerald Ford extended the commemoration to a month. Now, Black Americans continue to recognize others who poured blood, sweat and tears to get us to where we are today.

Civil Rights Leaders

Malcolm X gained fame as a charismatic and influential Black nationalist leader, minister of the Nation of Islam and human rights activist, known for his powerful oratory, black empowerment and self-reliance. Before his assassination in 1965, he left a lasting legacy on the Black Power movement, challenging the nonviolent approach of other civil rights activists with the defense of “by any means necessary.”

Ida B. Wells, born in 1862, worked as an American investigative journalist, educator and early leader of the civil rights movement. Born into slavery, Wells dedicated her life to fighting against prejudice and inequality. As a result, she was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  In 2020, she received a Pulitzer Prize special citation for her outstanding reporting of the horrific violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.

Music

Sacred music, including Negro spirituals and gospel music, illustrates the central role that music plays in African American spiritual and religious lifestyles. The earliest form of black musical expression in America, spirituals, is rooted in Christian psalms and hymns blended with African music styles and American secular music forms. Gospel music originated in the black church and has become a globally recognized genre of popular music. Spirituals were originally an oral tradition that imparted Christian values while also expressing the hardships of slavery. 

Originating around 1869, the blues formed the foundation of contemporary American music, influencing the cultural and social lives of African Americans. Geographically diverse incarnations of the blues arose in various regions, including the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, Chicago and Southern Texas. Each regional manifestation of the blues features a uniquely identifiable sound and message. 

Art

Edmonia Lewis, born in 1844 and also known as Wildfire, was an American sculptor who worked in a Neoclassical style, creating detailed marble sculptures. She drew inspiration from stories of classical antiquity as well as from the lives of Black and Native American people. Her father was African American, and her mother was a mix of Mississauga Ojibwe and African American descent. One of her most famous works is a bust of the legendary Native American leader, Hiawatha. Abolitionists took an interest in her work and helped her find an instructor. In the 1860s, her subjects included notable abolitionists of her day, like John Brown, who led the raid on Harpers Ferry that preceded the Civil War, and Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded one of the first all-Black regiments, 54th Massachusetts.

Born Jan. 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and folklorist, published many more books than any other Black woman in America. Despite her accomplishments, she was unable to capture her mainstream audience in her lifetime and died poor and alone in a welfare hotel. Today, especially with her most famous book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she is seen as one of the most important Black writers in American history.