*NEW* Resources For Black History Month 2025
February is Black History Month. This month allows educators to take a step back and reflect on whether their curriculum and instruction includes enough diverse voices and perspectives for students to learn about Black people who have shaped our nation and world.
Carter Woodson, the "Father of Black History," once stated,
"We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice."
Carter Woodson believed it was important to provide an annual theme.
The Theme For 2025 is African Americans and Labor
Resources From the National Museum of African American History & Culture

Invisible Changemakers of Industry
African Americans and Labor
African Americans and Labor
As a citizen workforce, African Americans continue to chart new paths toward economic stability, personal growth, and racial uplift. From enslaved workers in the 19th century to agricultural, industrial, and professional workers in the 20th and 21st centuries, Black men and women have always been vital to transforming and tooling America. During Black History Month, our museum celebrates Black people's often invisible labor of all kinds — across time, industry, and community.

Before and During the Civil War
Enslaved women often crafted fine fashion and beautiful needlework associated with elite southern white women. They produced ornate heirloom quality textiles, including delicate whitework and lace. Though agricultural work made up the majority of labor on plantations, a consistently vital role among enslaved people came from textile work. Highly skilled, these women developed a keen understanding of measurements, materials, tools, and techniques. Many passed on these trades to their children. Some women, like Elizabeth Keckly, were able to work for themselves and, over time, buy their way out of slavery. Keckly, who would purchase her freedom for $1200, opened her own shop in Washington, D.C., and became the personal dressmaker for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

Jim Crow, Mobility and Black Rosies
With Emancipation, African American women found success as contract laborers in agricultural, service, and professional careers in the areas of law, education, and business. Women like Mary McLeod Bethune aided in the building of this new labor force by opening schools that encouraged self-sufficiency, industry expertise, and altruism among Black girls and women.
Bethune founded the Dayton Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1904. Her first students were five girls and her five-year-old son. Seven years later, Bethune opened the Mary McLeod Hospital and Training School for Nurses to train Black women in healthcare professions.
Solidarity for Worker's Rights
Pullman Porters formed the nation's first African-American union and became a leading collective voice for the Black working class. |
During World War II, Bethune, along with A. Philip Randolph and Eleanor Roosevelt lobbied President Franklin Roosevelt to stipulate government contracts for the war must hire people of color and women. This ushered an estimated 600,000 African American women into factories where airplanes, tanks, and ships for the war effort were assembled.
Celebrating women on the assembly lines as patriotic, painter Norman Rockwell depicted the image of “Rosie the Riveter” (1943) in overalls and a headscarf with welding tools and muscles. Across the United States, “Black Rosies " and their lesser-known cousin, "Black Wendy the Welder," helped dispel gender and racial stereotypes surrounding labor while forging new labor opportunities for African American women.

Sacrifice and Service for Equality
Heavyweight Boxer Joe Louis embodied the mission of the "Double Victory" campaign by serving his country, while also fighting for civil rights. |

Between 1910 and 1970 approximately six million African Americans moved from the South to northern, midwestern and western states to take advantage of better educational and work opportunities. Known as the Great Migration, this redistribution of labor opened the door for African American women to not only gain more secure and lucrative work, but also to become business owners, in their own right. The period of migration also marked an increase in Black women creating and maintaining their own financial institutions and economic networks – including building and loan associations and mutual aid societies, like Mary Prout’s Independent Order of St. Luke, that provided financial literacy to Black women and positively impacted the labor and livelihoods of the larger African American community.

Laboring and Leisure
Black women’s toil has helped define American commerce and labor markets since enslavement. Often conscripted to long hours, harsh conditions, and strenuous labor, Black women often found little time and experienced guilt in resting. By the turn of the century, African American women began to “reclaim their time” using beauty salons as sanctuaries for pampering and rejuvenation. These sites doubled as therapeutic spaces to speak freely, fellowship, and release stress.
In 1923 Simm’s Blue Book estimated there were at least 160 beauty salons formally operating in New York City alone -- more than any other enterprise. African American women operated these businesses from storefronts, basements, and the porches of their homes, using them as unique social spaces for women of varying education and professional classes.

African Americans at Work: A Photo Essay
Explore photographs from the museum's collection documenting African Americans at work from the 1860s to today. |
Teaching Black History Month--Five Ideas From PBS
Commemorate Black History Month in your classroom with lesson plans and resources that cover topics ranging from civil rights events to discussions about race in current events. These lessons are appropriate for history, ELA and social studies classrooms, and include resources for students in middle or high school.
The March on Washington

Racial equality — How far have we come and how far do we still need to go?

Martin Luther King., Jr. dreamed of an America where people could "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Use this lesson plan to start a discussion in your classroom about where we are on the path to realizing this dream.
Teaching about Selma

Try out these interactive lessons and recommended resources from Teaching for Change that invite students to step into the history and think critically and creatively about the continued fight for justice today.
A history of discrimination and its consequences

In this lesson for middle and high school students, students analyze what "The American Dream" means and what role racial discrimination may play in failing to attain that dream.
Analyzing "Stop and Frisk" through personal narratives and infographics

This Common Core-aligned lesson helps students explore the New York City’s “stop, question and frisk” program through videos, graphics and a news article. An engaging introduction creates a foundation to help students understand infographics and their utility as a cross-curricular tool.
Help Learners Celebrate Black History with These Videos, Lessons, Podcasts, and More from Common Sense Education
Essential Sites and Curricula for All Ages

Click the button below to find a library of Black History Month resources for all grade levels that includes videos, texts, lessons, podcasts, and more. These resources include activists, art and culture, inventors, engineers, historical events, and beyond.
Every resource Common Sense Education has curated here has a suggested grade band, but many are flexible and adaptable to just about any age group.