Best Lessons and Activities for Teaching Black History Month (2024)

In 1926, Black historian Carter G. Woodson created the forerunner to Black History Month, Negro History Week.

Since then, the recognition of Black history as integral to American history has grown tremendously. At the same time, old habits and old-fashioned curricula die hard, keeping Black History Month a relevant necessity.

The following are some of the best lessons and activities for teaching Black history. Be sure to start with No. 1, “Do's and Don'ts of Teaching Black History.” Here teachers can learn ways to integrate Black history into the American History curriculum—where it belongs—all year long.

Best Black History Month Lessons and Activities

All Grades

Do's and Don'ts of Teaching Black History
Black history should be part of the curriculum all year long. Learn how to integrate Black history into your history and social studies curricula year round.

Teaching Hard History
A guide to teaching students of all levels in an age-appropriate way about the difficult topic of the slave trade and its role in American history. Organized around key concepts and essential knowledge, the guide includes primary texts, videos, and a professional development webinar.

Black Athletes and Civil Rights: 6 Upstanders to Introduce to Your Students
Black athletes have been in the forefront of the struggle for civil rights for more than a century. Have your students read about Black athletes from history who took a stand and then compare them to modern-day activist athletes. How have the issues changed? How have they remained the same?

Poets.org Lesson Plans for Black History Month
A truly wonderful selection of poetry from Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Marilyn Nelson, Nikki Giovanni, and other great African-American poets. Featured poems are supported by classroom activities, related artwork and audio.

Lesson of the Day: When Blackness Is a Superpower
Who doesn’t love a superhero? A wonderfully creative way to merge writing, art, and social studies, this lesson is natural for kids and anyone who likes mythology.

31 Highly Influential African-American Scientists
Go beyond the oft-cited George Washington Carver to learn about many other African-American scientists, past and present, whose work has been instrumental in the making of the modern world.

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum: 22 Stories about the Negro Leagues
These 22 compelling video stories about the Negro Leagues—spotlighting not only the players, but also the business behind the game—offer a great opportunity for students to understand the critical role Blacks played in the rise of our national pastime.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum: Oh Freedom! Teaching Art and the Civil Rights Movement
Teach Civil Rights by exploring artwork from the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Search by artwork [https://americanart.si.edu/education/oh-freedom/art] or artist [https://americanart.si.edu/education/oh-freedom/artists].

Grades K-5

National Civil Rights Museum Before the Boycott
What happened to cause the Montgomery bus boycott? This interactive puts students in the role of journalists who investigate the events leading up to the first large-scale demonstration against segregation.

Grades 6-8

iCivics Black History Month
Six brief videos from the highly respected iCivics organization are accompanied by standards-aligned lesson plans, including fillable PDFs for digital learning. The lessons illuminate not only the best-known activists, but also lesser-known pioneers, such as Constance Baker Motley, the first African-American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Other topics include the Jim Crow era and the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

Grades 9-12

The Teacher Who Desgregated New York Transit
Everyone knows Rosa Parks. But do you know the story of Elizabeth Jennings? This in-depth excerpt from America’s First Freedom Rider: Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rights is a fascinating look at a little-known but important civil rights episode that occurred not in the deep South, but in New York City. Have your students read the story, then compare it to the better-known Rosa Parks civil disobedience.

Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement: Civil Rights Movement Archive
An extensive archive of photos, documents, letters, articles, speeches, poetry, and more related to the 1950s-60s Civil Rights movement. Check out the Teacher Resources, which provide lessons, activities, and a how-to for connecting students virtually with freedom movement veterans.

Library of Congress: Freed People Tell Their Stories
What was slavery really like? Go beyond the written documents and listen to the voices of people who survived it. This remarkable set of interviews with people who were once enslaved was recorded between 1932 and 1975, in nine states. The original recordings are accompanied by transcripts for careful study.

The National Archives Educator Resources: The Slave Trade
Resources for educators to investigate the slave trade in American history, including primary source documents, teaching activities, and document analysis worksheets.

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