26 Primary Source Black History Month Activities
The United States recognized its first official Black History Month in 1976 when scholar Carter G. Woodson became dedicated to celebrating the historic contributions Black people have made—and continue to make—to better our country. Today, we’re sharing 26 primary source Black History Month activities to help your students better understand the Black experience in the United States of the past and present.
Learn about 8 important Black history court cases and laws
Explore the landmark court cases and laws that led to and came out of the civil rights movement.
1. Sarah C. Roberts vs. the City of Boston
In 1850, Sarah C. Roberts, a Black girl living in Boston, was required to attend an all-Black elementary school far from her home. Her father filed a lawsuit against the city so Sarah could attend an all-white school closer to their home.
2. “40 acres and a mule” military order
In 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army issued Special Field Order No. 15, which outlined how the Union would give confiscated Southern land to newly emancipated Black people in 40-acre sections. Although this order doesn’t mention mules, Sherman delivered another order that said the army could lend the new settlers mules.
President Abraham Lincoln approved this order, but following his assassination, Vice President Andrew Johnson reversed the order.
3. Plessy v. Ferguson
After the Civil War, three constitutional amendments gave Black Americans political rights. During the same period, state governments passed laws to legalize racial inequality.
The Louisiana Plessy v. Ferguson case of the 1890s happened in response to Louisiana’s law requiring separate railroad cars for Blacks and whites. Homer Plessy was a mixed-race man, born into freedom but with ⅛ Black ancestry, which required him to ride in a Back streetcar. His case went to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight for the right to sit in the car of his choice because of his mixed-race background.
4. Jim Crow laws
In the 1900s, states and local governments in the post-Civil War South enacted what they called Jim Crow laws, named after a derogatory theater character from the 1830s. These laws were called “separate but equal” and were meant to segregate Black people from public spaces like buses, street cars, restaurants, and even public restrooms.
In 1908, Congress debated the legality of these laws and whether they should add an amendment to the constitution to add “Jim Crow” cars to the District of Columbia Street Railway Trackage bill.
5. Brown v. Board of Education
In the 1950s, schools across the country were still segregated by race. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which sought to make integrated schools legal across America.
6. Governor George Wallace’s integration blockade
In the 1960s, Alabama Governor George Wallace was a fierce opponent of racial integration. He refused to provide protection and other resources to protesters during the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights marches.
Reverend Hosea Williams and other civil rights leaders brought a civil case to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama to receive permission for their next march—and ensure protection from the state.
7. Civil Rights Act of 1964
Following the Civil Rights marches and demonstrations of the early 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. It made discrimination in public places and employment unlawful and required public businesses and locations like schools to integrate.
8. Loving v. Virginia
Even after the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law, states still had laws that upheld segregation and unjust racial practices. In 1967, married couple Richard and Mildred Loving—a white man and a Black woman—appealed to the Supreme Court to recognize their marriage, as it was considered illegal in their home state of Virginia.
Read 8 first-person accounts of Black history events
Hear about key events in Black history from those who experienced it with letters, interviews, and other first-person source materials.
1. Lemuel Haynes’ “Liberty Further Extended”
Lemuel Haynes was a mixed-race anti-slavery activist from the Colonial Era who spent most of his life as an indentured servant on a Massachusetts farm. In his manuscript “Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave-Keeping,” he argued that Black people had the same natural right to freedom as anyone else.
2. Olaudah Equiano describes the Middle Passage
Ilaudah Equiano was one of the 10 to 12 million people sold into slavery between about 1400 and the 1800s. According to his biography, at age 11, he was kidnapped from his family and forced onto a slave trading ship headed to Barbados and Virginia through an area of the Atlantic known as the Middle Passage.
3. Conductor on the Underground Railroad
In the 1800s, John P. Parker, a freeman, moved to Ripley, Ohio, and helped hundreds of enslaved people escape to freedom across the Ohio River from Kentucky along the busiest segment of the Underground Railroad. In his autobiography, Parker described what working on the Underground Railroad was like.
4.“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”
Frederick Douglass was an antislavery activist, writer, and public speaker. He had little formal education but wrote many speeches and five autobiographies. In 1845, he published a memoir that described his experiences as an enslaved person in pre-Civil War Maryland.
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5. The case of Solomon Northup
In 1853, Solomon Northup shared his story about being kidnapped and spending 12 years in slavery before being freed and helping run the Underground Railroad in Vermont. In 2014, his story became a movie called “12 Years a Slave.”
6. Black soldiers’ letters home during the Civil War
During the Civil War, approximately 185,000 Black men fought for freedom. Yet only a few of these letters survive today. Samuel Cabble, a private in the all-Black 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry; Morgan W. Carter from Madison, Indiana; and Spotswood Rice are some of the only Black soldiers whose words about the war still exist.
7. Chicago Defender supports the Great Migration
In the early 1900s, many Black people began leaving the Southern United States for the North to find better economic opportunities and avoid discriminating laws. The mass movement was called the Great Migration. The Chicago Defender, a leading Black newspaper publication, published an editorial about the significance of this movement.
8. James Daniel on sharecropping
Sharecropping was a tenant farming system where farmers rented land from landowners in exchange for a portion of the crops grown on the land. This practice was common in the South in the early 1900s. While framed as a way for Black farmers to make money, it often kept them in poverty instead.
Read 10 speeches from important civil rights leaders
Let students discover the inspiring words of key Black historical figures and others who fought for racial equality with the full text of the following speeches:
1. Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Sojourner Truth was a former enslaved person who escaped to freedom in 1826. She then became an activist for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. In 1851, she gave her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech to the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, which discussed her views on both topics.
2. Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided”
At the end of the 1858 Republican State Convention, Abraham Lincoln—then a U.S. Senate candidate—gave what became known as his “House Divided” speech. Aimed at his opponent, Senator Douglas, and his supporters, Lincoln argued that the U.S. could not remain half slave and half free.
3. Frederick Douglass, “Men of color, To Arms!”
In 1863, after the start of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass gave a speech called “Men of Color, To Arms!” It urged Black men to join the Union Army and fight for their freedom.
4. Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise
Booker T. Washington was a writer, educator, and public speaker. In 1895, he gave a speech to a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition. He advised southern Black people to work for white people but asked that they be given due process of law and basic education in exchange. This address became known as the Atlanta Compromise.
5. “The Talented Tenth” by W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois was an American writer, teacher, and civil rights activist. In his “The Talented Tenth” essay, Du Bois argued that the “top 10 percent” of Black Americans should receive higher education and become leaders.
6. Ida B Wells, “Lynching, Our National Crime”
Ida B. Wells was a leader in the anti-lynching movement in the U.S., which started in the 1890s. Later, she co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She delivered a speech about how lynching was a national crime in the country at the 1909 National Negro Conference.
7. Daisy Bates, “What Price Freedom?”
Daisy Bates was an early leader in the civil rights movement and worked for many organizations fighting for justice. She also wrote for a civil rights newspaper and organized a group of students known as the Little Rock Nine, who were the first Black students to attend an all-white high school.
In 1963, Bates gave a speech that addressed the complex systems of Southern traditions that oppressed Black Americans and how they were ready to fight for their rights.
8. President Kennedy’s 1963 speech on race
President John F. Kennedy was in office at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. In 1963, he gave a civil rights address to ask Congress to enact landmark civil rights legislation in response to the threats of violence and obstruction on the University of Alabama campus following attempts to desegregate the school.
9. Barack Obama’s election night victory speech
In 2008, Barack Obama became the first Black president-elect of the United States. In his election night victory speech, Obama paid tribute to civil rights activists and everyday Americans who made the groundbreaking election possible.
10. Kamala Harris’ vice president-elect acceptance speech
In 2020, Kamala Harris became the first Black, Asian, and woman elected Vice President of the United States. She spoke at the victory rally following the announcement and acknowledged all the women who fought for the right to vote, which made her election possible.
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