--- title: Black History Month: How It Started and Why It's in February description: Two very important birthdays helped activists, led by Carter G. Woodson, choose when to celebrate canonical: https://time.com/4197928/history-black-history-month/ author: Julia Zorthian article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-29T12:00:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T19:37:02.000Z article:section: History og:title: A Brief History of Black History Month og:description: Here's how the U.S. started commemorating African-American history each February og:url: https://time.com/4197928/history-black-history-month/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt44122950f22e9083/69887b1b3c163950a545bc63/bhm.jpeg?branch=production&width=582&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 582 og:image:height: 327 og:image:alt: Carter Woodson og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Brief History of Black History Month twitter:description: Here's how the U.S. started commemorating African-American history each February twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt44122950f22e9083/69887b1b3c163950a545bc63/bhm.jpeg?branch=production&width=582&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is How February Became Black History Month > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/W3Zny2Gh.m3u8) (10:26)  _Published 2021-05-28. It's been 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, when an angry white mob destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa Oklahoma. But Tulsa's story is part of a larger history of Black Wall Streets that existed in many American cities._  by [Julia Zorthian](https://time.com/author/julia-zorthian/)  ## Julia Zorthian Updated: Dec 13, 2023 7:37 PM UTCPublished: Jan 29, 2016 12:00 PM UTC  Portrait of American historian and educator Carter Godwin Woodson (1875 - 1950), 1910s. Portrait of American historian and educator Carter Godwin Woodson (1875 - 1950), 1910s. Hulton Archive / Getty Images  by [Julia Zorthian](https://time.com/author/julia-zorthian/)  ## Julia Zorthian Updated: Dec 13, 2023 7:37 PM UTCPublished: Jan 29, 2016 12:00 PM UTC It was in 1964 when the author James Baldwin reflected on the shortcomings of his education. “When I was going to school,” he [said](http://time.com/vault/issue/1964-03-27/page/77/), “I began to be bugged by the teaching of American history because it seemed that that history had been taught without cognizance of my presence.” Baldwin’s thoughts echoed those of many before and after him. Half a century earlier, when [Carter G. Woodson](http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history-Carter-G.-Woodson) had the same frustration, he [set the foundation](http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month) for what would become today’s national Black History Month, observed each February. In the early 20th century, while he earned a Masters degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Harvard, both in history, Woodson witnessed how black people were underrepresented in the books and conversations that shaped the study of American history. According to the way many historians taught the nation’s past, African Americans were barely part of the story—a narrative that Woodson knew was not true. So in 1915, he and Jesse E. Moorland [founded](http://time.com/vault/issue/1926-07-12/page/11/) the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now the [Association for the Study of African American Life and History](http://asalh100.org/), or the ASALH). The organization would promote studying black history as a discipline and celebrate the accomplishments of African Americans. “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated,” Woodson [said](http://aast.uark.edu/8703.php) of the need for such study. In 1926, Woodson and the ASALH launched a “Negro History Week” to bring attention to his mission and help school systems coordinate their focus on the topic. Woodson chose the second week in February, as it encompassed both Frederick Douglass’ birthday on February 14 and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12. The celebrations and studies spread quickly, as the ASALH [tells](http://asalh100.org/origins-of-black-history-month/) it, driving demand for teaching materials and spurring the formation of black history clubs. But, though a newfound understanding of black culture and literature was spreading amongst the middle class, the idea of expanding the week to a month did not come until several decades later. During the Civil Rights Movement, Freedom Schools in the South embraced the week and its curriculum message as a way to contribute to the mission. By the mid-1960s, the most popular textbook for eighth-grade U.S. history classes mentioned only two black people in the entire century of history that had transpired since the Civil War—and that problem [could no longer be ignored](http://time.com/vault/issue/1964-03-27/page/77/). It was in that decade that colleges and universities across the country transformed the week into a Black History Month on campus. A number of mayors had already adopted the celebration as a municipal event by the time President Gerald Ford decreed Black History Month a national observance in 1976, on both the fiftieth anniversary of the first iteration and America’s bicentennial year. “In celebrating Black History Month,” Ford [said in his message](https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/760074.htm), “we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” ## Transcript The legacies of black wall Street's, it's important for people to remember because there were so many people who have no idea that there were vital Dynamic places where African Americans were living out their vision of the American dream opportunity in Hope and progress of for their community. June 1st 2021 Marcel hundred years since the Tulsa Race Massacre, as many as 300, people were killed as an angry white mob, destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa. Oklahoma once known as that City's Black Wall Street story is part of a larger history of segregated prosperity in many American cities around the turn of the century. So ask Jim Crow begins to really take shape and African-Americans are forced into segregated parts of the city. These communities rise up in places like Durham North Carolina and Little Rock Arkansas, Jackson, Mississippi, and people began to notice that up there all kinds of businesses and services that grow there. And so they kind of take on the name Black Wall Street. One of the biggest and longest lasting black wall. Street's was in Richmond. Virginia. A neighborhood called Jackson Ward. So the factors that led to Richmond's being the cradle of black capitalism, lay in the diverse slave economy, that existed at that time. So you had African American who were involved and not just agricultural slavery but also an urban and Industrial slavery end after the Civil War II. Had this concentrated community of African Americans who have been working in the city in factories and it feels and rural areas around Richmond has continued to build the institutions and the community and the neighborhood that they had begun even before the war. And then you begin to have a lot of really important, but natural first, such as insurance companies and Banks, which really highlight Richmond as the first Black Wall Street. One of the most storied figures in Jackson Ward history was a banker and business woman named Maggie Lena Walker. You cannot study magazine Walker and not be fascinated you do with her, she was born in slaved in 1864 on, right? Towards the end of the Civil War, and really saw economic empowerment of African American women as the path forward Locker started, her banking career at a mutual Aid Society, called The Independent order of St, Luke 1867 St. Luke was established to help freed slaves. Gain economic independence in 1901 and she said, I'm specifically talking to the women here. Look, good women here. Whose money is in this organization and she was able to bring that Vision to fruition in 1903. When she became the first black woman Bank president. St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. Later named the Consolidated Bank and Trust was acquired in 2005, but Walker's home in Jackson. Ward is still standing. As you see around me, the homes have been restored on the outside while mrs. Walker's home. It's been restored to its full Glory as much as we could using artifacts that belong to Maggie Walker and her family, because we still get a lot of people who come in and do our chores, and they are still amazing. Why didn't I know about her before? Why have I not heard the story? And it is a story that has been preserved quite fully in Richmond itself, but not so much across the country. What is happening now in Jacksonville? Or is that those who remember, the stories are coming together to make sure that they are no longer for God neighborhood? We not look as it did when she walks these streets, but the memories are still there. In his Heyday, I imagine that it was a fabulous to live and Jackson board that you needed. You could get your in Jackson Ward, and I will just say walking into the st. Luke Bank on, I think had to be a treat. First of all, making me walk or made sure that he was beautifully appointed with mahogany and marble and I can just imagine a made of domestic. I'm working in a white person's home in another part of the city and she walks into the bank. And she's greeted probably didn't, but by not just her first name, but she's call miss or missus, and I just can't imagine that it is height Jackson, Ward was an incredible experience, but then there's also the dark side and that is that it is a segregated community. Magalina Walker accommodate segregation by real ending mostly in the segregated areas. Are so there I think in the midst of this in affluent and its dynamism. There's always that dark cloud of racism in Jim Crow that kind of just outside there is a a world that wants to continue to treat them as second-class Citizens. Jackson word with a Haven for black business for many years but like Tulsa was Black Wall Street. It to you came to an end, the difference between the end of Jackson, Ward, and the end of Tulsa, is really a difference in degree. And so for Jackson, Ward, it was more of a slow death. A wide range of factors caused Jackson Ward's, economic decline, including redlining, which kept Capital out of black neighborhoods, slum clearance, where City's raise old buildings without rebuilding in certain areas and a highway system that cut right through the neighborhood. But the final end to Jackson Ward's. Black Wall Street days, came on the heels of the civil rights movement and desegregation. So ironically at the very time that you begin to have opportunity at least legally for African Americans to have equal accommodation, to be able to get you no equal access to education is at the same time that these communities have been so undermined in the decades previous and so when they have choices to make, they in a move to the suburbs and the Really the most vulnerable and needy living in places like Jackson Ward. The occurrence of diminishing. Black wealth has a long history in our country. I mean really takes root in slavery. There you have hundreds and hundreds of years of unpaid black labor, and then be disenfranchised and their wealthy undermined and other ways. I think that we just really have to deal with this long-standing American exploitation of African Americans. You can go to your bank tomorrow and you can say until you as a corporation start to speak on our behalf. I want all my money in recent years, there has been a movement to reinvest funds into black Banks and businesses. One of the organizations advocating for this financial shift is Bank Black USA which helps people find and invest in Black banks for people to move their money from the larger institutions that had it. Maybe a history of discriminatory practices and predatory lending practices and move that money to in the eyes with their minority depository Institution. According to the FDIC mdi's are more likely to lend to lower and moderate-income communities and help promote economic viability in these areas, found out that black financial institutions are under supported in under capitalize, right? Black banks are in Decline. For example, there was like, Fifty of these institutions in 2001 and 2021 and very nearly 20, our solution was to create resources for people to be able to compare the banks and services, and financial help the community impact it. Because we do believe that these empty eyes. Can you play an integral role in closing that racial wealth Gap with the support? It if you don't learn about the origin and history of Blackwell, you'll fall into the Trap of thinking that there was no, Blackwell. The time to learn about Jackson would take time to learn about Durham a time to learn about Tulsa. Let's ring the stories for word, and remember those times of black Excellence, it can come again, if we follow the road now cuz they said before us, ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4197928/history-black-history-month/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4197928/history-black-history-month/"},"headline":"This Is How February Became Black History Month","datePublished":"2016-01-29T12:00:29.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-13T19:37:02.000Z","description":"Two very important birthdays helped activists choose when to celebrate","url":"https://time.com/4197928/history-black-history-month/","keywords":["Education","Black History Month","Civil Rights"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt44122950f22e9083/69887b1b3c163950a545bc63/bhm.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Julia Zorthian","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/julia-zorthian/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt44122950f22e9083/69887b1b3c163950a545bc63/bhm.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Carter Woodson","caption":"Carter Woodson","creditText":"Hulton Archive / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/education/","name":"Education"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4197928/history-black-history-month/","name":"This Is How February Became Black History Month"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets","description":"It's been 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, when an angry white mob destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa Oklahoma. 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