African American History: People, Freedom and Achievements

Africa is a huge continent with many peoples and languages. Today it has more than 50 countries. Long before slavery in America, families lived there in villages, cities and kingdoms.

Trading and learning in Mali

A kingdom is land ruled by a king or queen. An empire brings many lands under one ruler. The Mali Empire grew powerful in West Africa in the 1200s. Sundiata Keita was its first great leader.

Mali had gold. Traders from the Sahara Desert had salt. People needed salt for health and to help keep food from spoiling. Follow the trade: traders carried salt across the desert, exchanged it for gold, then carried gold away. Each side gained something it wanted.

Mansa Musa ruled Mali in the 1300s. “Mansa” means king or emperor. In 1324, he traveled through Egypt on a religious journey to Mecca. He spent and gave away so much gold that gold’s price in Egypt fell. Gold had become easier to get there.

Mansa Musa also brought scholars and books home. Timbuktu became a famous place of learning. Students studied history, medicine and the stars. Libraries held thousands of books. Trade and learning were both part of Mali’s life.

Artists in Benin and Kongo

The Kingdom of Benin stood in what is now southern Nigeria. Its people were Edo, and its king was called the oba. Artists made brass plaques showing palace life and warriors. This kingdom was in a different place from today’s country named Benin.

Kongo stood on the west coast of Central Africa. Its lands included parts of today’s Angola and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mbanza Kongo was its capital. Weavers made cloth from raffia palm. Metalworkers shaped copper and iron.

Families and skills

Most people lived in villages. They farmed, fished, raised animals and made useful things. Children learned through stories, songs, drumming and dance. People later forced to America carried knowledge and traditions with them.

Imagine looking at a brass plaque from old Benin. First, notice the people and clothing shown. Next, ask what the picture tells you about palace life. The plaque is evidence of skilled artists and a royal court. Africa’s history includes cities, learning and art long before slavery in America.

Slavery took away people’s freedom. Enslavers treated people as property: things they claimed they could own. An enslaved person was forced to work and was not free to leave. Slavery was wrong.

Forced across the ocean

From the 1500s to the 1800s, millions of Africans were captured in wars and raids. They were sold to European traders. The ocean crossing was called the Middle Passage. People were chained in crowded ships for weeks or months. Many became sick, and many died. Families lost their homes and loved ones.

In August 1619, about 20 enslaved Africans arrived at Point Comfort, Virginia. They are the first enslaved Africans recorded in England’s North American colonies. Africans had already lived in Spanish lands, including Florida. The date marks an important beginning in the English colonies.

To see the length of time from 1619 to 1865, subtract:

That span reaches across about ten generations. Children born to enslaved mothers were enslaved too. A child could grow up, become a parent and still be denied freedom.

Work and family life

Slavery existed in all thirteen colonies. Northern states later passed laws ending it. In the South, large farms called plantations used enslaved labor to grow crops. Cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar were among them. Nearly 4 million people were enslaved in the United States by 1860.

People worked long days in fields and homes. Others used skills such as carpentry and metalworking. Children had to work too. Enslavers could punish people harshly. They could sell a parent or child far away, breaking families apart. Many Southern states also banned teaching enslaved people to read.

Think about freedom to make choices. Could an enslaved person refuse the work and leave? No. Could a family stop an enslaver from selling their child? No. These lost choices help explain why slavery was more than difficult work.

People’s lives were different

Racism means treating people as less than others because of race. Enslavers used false racist claims to defend taking people’s labor and freedom. Enslaved people’s own accounts tell of wanting freedom and working toward it.

Some Black Americans were free. In 1860, nearly half a million were free, while nearly 4 million were enslaved. Both groups belong in this history.

People held in slavery made choices that challenged its power. Resistance means working against something unfair. It could be quiet, public, small or large.

Keeping the power to learn

Enslavers tried to control people’s work, movement and learning. Some people slowed their work or broke tools. Others learned to read in secret. These actions carried risks, including harsh punishment.

Frederick Douglass wanted to read as a boy in Baltimore. His enslaver tried to stop him. Frederick traded bread to other children for help with letters. Follow his choice: a rule blocked learning, he found helpers, and he learned anyway. That was resistance because it worked against the control slavery placed on him.

Caring for one another

Slavery’s laws did not protect enslaved people’s marriages. Families still formed loving bonds and raised children. They named babies for loved ones. If an enslaver sold a parent away, other people helped care for the children.

Families and communities kept stories and skills alive. Clever animals in stories could outwit stronger animals. Foods such as okra and black-eyed peas came from Africa. The banjo grew from African instruments. These traditions helped people carry a shared past into new lives.

Songs of hope

Spirituals are religious songs created by enslaved African Americans. People sang them while working and worshiping. The songs could carry sorrow, faith and hope at the same time.

“Go Down, Moses” tells a Bible story about freedom from slavery. Enslaved singers could connect that story with their own wish for freedom. A song could help people express a hope they shared.

Different paths toward freedom

Some people saved money to buy their freedom. Others went to court. Some escaped. Others joined uprisings, fighting slavery together. Enslavers punished uprisings harshly.

You can recognize resistance by asking what control a person challenged. Secret reading challenged a ban on learning. Escape challenged an enslaver’s power to hold someone. Caring for family helped keep bonds strong when slavery tried to break them.

The Underground Railroad was a secret network of people and routes. It helped enslaved people escape. Its name borrowed words from trains, but the network had no tracks of its own.

How the network worked

A conductor guided freedom seekers. A station was a safe hiding place. Freedom seekers were people escaping slavery. Many began or completed their journeys without help. Free and enslaved Black people helped others, as did some white people, American Indians and church groups.

People traveled on foot, in boats and wagons, and sometimes on real trains. They often moved at night and hid by day. Rivers and stars helped them find their way. Being caught could mean harsh punishment or being sold far away.

Some headed north to free states or Canada. Others sought freedom in Mexico. A strong law passed in 1850 made capture easier even in Northern states. Canada became a safer goal for many.

Harriet’s choice

Harriet Tubman was born enslaved in Maryland around 1822. As a child she was called Minty. In 1849, she feared being sold and escaped to Philadelphia. Her own freedom mattered deeply, but her loved ones were still enslaved.

She returned to Maryland again and again. Over about ten years, she made about 13 trips. She guided about 70 family members and friends to freedom. She gave directions to about 70 more. Disguises, helpers and signals helped her plan the journeys.

Follow the choices in one journey: first, a freedom seeker decided to leave. Next, a guide helped with a route. Then, trusted people offered hiding places. Reaching a free state still did not always end the danger after the 1850 law.

Stories and records

Records support about 70 people guided on about 13 trips. Bigger numbers sometimes appear in stories about Harriet. Quilts with secret map codes are another popular story, but first-hand accounts from that time do not support it.

Henry “Box” Brown escaped in 1849 inside a wooden shipping box. Friends sent him from Richmond to helpers in Philadelphia. During the Civil War, Tubman served the U.S. Army as a nurse, cook, scout and spy. In 1863, she helped lead the Combahee River raid, which freed more than 700 people.

Frederick Douglass used his own story to challenge slavery. An abolitionist worked to end slavery. To abolish something means to end it by law.

Learning and escaping

Frederick was born enslaved in Maryland in February 1818. He was separated from his mother while very young. He did not know his birthday, so he later chose February 14.

In Baltimore, he learned to read and write despite being kept from school. Around age 12, he bought a book of speeches. Reading showed him arguments against unfairness and gave him words for his own thoughts.

On September 3, 1838, he escaped, dressed as a sailor. Anna Murray, a free Black woman, helped pay for the trip. He took a train north and reached New York City. He was 20. He married Anna and took the last name Douglass.

Making words travel

Frederick became a powerful speaker. He described slavery from his own life. Some listeners doubted he had been enslaved because he spoke so well. In 1845, he published his life story, naming real people and places.

His words could now travel beyond a crowd. A speech reached the people who heard it. A printed book could reach readers far away. His newspaper, The North Star, carried arguments against slavery too. Its name recalled the star that guided freedom seekers north.

Think through how his work could lead to change. First, people learned what slavery did to a real person. Next, they read reasons to oppose it. Then, Douglass urged them to act. Telling the truth and asking for action worked together.

A shared effort

Speaking out could be dangerous. Crowds attacked abolitionists. Naming himself in a book also put Douglass at risk of capture. He kept working for freedom and fairness.

Sojourner Truth had also been enslaved. She left slavery in New York with her baby daughter in 1826. She became a speaker for abolition and women’s rights. Black and white people, women and men, joined the effort.

Douglass also supported women’s rights. During the Civil War, he pressed President Lincoln for fair pay and treatment for Black soldiers. His fight for fairness reached beyond his own escape.

Freedom came through many people’s actions and several important changes. A timeline helps you keep those changes in order.

War and the Proclamation

The Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865. Southern states left the United States to protect slavery. They formed the Confederacy. The Union fought to keep the country together. Many enslaved people escaped to Union Army lines.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Emancipation means setting people free. The order declared freedom in states and parts of states still fighting the Union. It left out the border states that stayed in the Union and some Southern areas already under Union control.

The order did not end slavery nationwide that day. Union victory and the Army’s advance helped make freedom real in the places it covered. The Proclamation also supported accepting Black men into the armed forces. Black sailors already served, and Army recruiting grew. Almost 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors served by the war’s end.

June in Texas

The main fighting ended in spring 1865. Enslavers in Texas still held people in slavery. On June 19, General Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3 in Galveston, backed by Union soldiers. It said that enslaved people in Texas were free.

More than 250,000 people were enslaved in Texas. News and freedom did not reach everyone at once. Some enslavers held on to their control. The Army’s arrival mattered. This history is remembered on Juneteenth.

A change for the whole country

An amendment changes the U.S. Constitution. On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment became part of it. It ended slavery across the country.

Put three cards in date order:

1. January 1, 1863: the Emancipation Proclamation.
2. June 19, 1865: freedom announced in Texas.
3. December 6, 1865: the Thirteenth Amendment.

June comes before December. That helps you see why Juneteenth was not the final legal end of slavery everywhere. Slavery remained legal in Kentucky and Delaware until the amendment. Freedom seekers, soldiers, abolitionists, lawmakers and the president all helped bring change.

After slavery ended, nearly 4 million people began building free lives. They wanted to find family, learn, work and choose where to live. Many started with little money and no land.

Finding loved ones

Reconstruction names the years from 1865 to 1877. The country rebuilt after the Civil War and worked out what freedom would mean.

Some families had been separated for years. People traveled long distances to find loved ones. They placed newspaper notices asking about missing parents, children and partners. Couples could now marry by law.

The Freedmen’s Bureau, a government office set up in 1865, helped. It offered food, clothing and hospitals. It also helped reunite families and build schools.

Learning together

People wanted reading and writing skills that slavery had denied them. Sometimes children and grandparents learned in the same room. Neighbors raised money, paid teachers and built schools. Churches provided space for lessons and meetings, as well as worship.

Colleges trained Black teachers and leaders. Fisk University opened in 1866 and Howard University in 1867. They are examples of historically Black colleges and universities, often called HBCUs.

Making a town

In 1877, Black settlers, many from Kentucky, arrived in Nicodemus, Kansas. They wanted land of their own. First they dug shelters in the ground. Then they planted crops. A school and churches followed. Each step met a need: shelter, food, learning and community. Nicodemus is now a National Historic Site.

Rights and leaders

The Fourteenth Amendment, in 1868, made people born in the United States citizens, including formerly enslaved people. The Fifteenth Amendment, in 1870, barred denying the vote because of race. Black men gained voting rights; women still faced barriers to voting.

In 1870, Hiram Revels became the first Black U.S. senator. Joseph Rainey became the first Black member of the U.S. House of Representatives that year.

Many white leaders fought these changes. After Reconstruction, Southern states passed laws that blocked Black voters and separated people by race. Freedom made new choices possible. Protecting equal rights still needed work.

An educator teaches or helps run schools. Booker T. Washington and Mary McLeod Bethune built schools that gave many Black children and adults new chances.

Booker’s path to school

Washington was born enslaved in Virginia in 1856. After freedom came, he worked in a salt furnace and coal mine. He wanted an education. He traveled about 500 miles to Hampton Institute, much of the way on foot.

In 1881, he helped start Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Students learned trades and trained to become teachers. They made bricks and built school buildings. Skills learned in class could help build the school itself.

Washington urged people to gain skills, save money and own land. W. E. B. Du Bois, another Black leader, stressed demanding equal rights right away. Both wanted better lives for Black Americans, but they disagreed about how to get there. Tuskegee grew into today’s Tuskegee University.

Mary turns learning into teaching

Bethune was born free in South Carolina in 1875. Her parents had been enslaved. She picked cotton as a child. When a school opened nearby, she walked miles to attend. She shared her lessons with her family at home.

On October 3, 1904, she opened a school in Daytona Beach, Florida. She had just $1.50, five girl students and her own son. Old boxes became desks. Berries supplied ink. Selling sweet potato pies helped pay for supplies.

Follow how she solved each problem. The children needed somewhere to write, so she used boxes. They needed ink, so she made it. The school needed money, so she sold food. Starting with little did not mean doing little.

The school grew into Bethune-Cookman University. Bethune later started the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. That name uses an older word for Black Americans. She also advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt and pressed for fair treatment.

Two beginnings

Washington and Bethune both valued education and built lasting schools. Their childhoods were different: Washington was born enslaved; Bethune was born free. Their schools grew through shared work, practical skills and community support.

Scientists and inventors ask how things work and how to make them better. A scientist studies and tests ideas. An inventor makes something new or improves a way of doing something.

Carver cares for the soil

George Washington Carver was born enslaved in Missouri near the Civil War’s end. As a baby, he and his mother were taken by raiders. He was found, but she was not. He grew up loving plants. Neighbors called him the “Plant Doctor.”

Carver faced racism while seeking an education. One college refused to admit him because he was Black. He later earned a master’s degree at Iowa State in 1896. Booker T. Washington invited him to Tuskegee, where he worked for 47 years.

Cotton grown year after year used up nutrients in the soil. Carver taught crop rotation: growing different crops in turns. Peanuts helped restore nitrogen, a nutrient plants need.

Follow a simple plan. In the first year, a farmer grows cotton. In the next, the farmer plants peanuts. Cotton can follow in the third year in healthier soil. Changing crops helps the land keep feeding plants.

Carver also found many uses for crops: 325 for peanuts and more than 100 for sweet potatoes. He wrote guides and took lessons to farms by wagon. He did not invent peanut butter. His work helped farmers use their land and crops well.

Safer tools and useful improvements

Garrett Morgan made a safety hood that helped people breathe in smoke. In 1916, he used it to help rescue workers in a tunnel. In 1923, he patented a traffic signal that could stop traffic in all directions. He improved traffic safety; he did not invent the first traffic light.

A patent gives its owner a limited-time right to stop others from making, using or selling an invention without permission. Lewis Latimer patented a better way to make carbon filaments in 1882. A filament is the thin thread that glows in a light bulb. His work helped bulbs last longer and cost less.

Madam C. J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, made hair products for Black women. Her company created jobs for thousands of women. She was the first child in her family born free.

Try a problem-solving path

Start with a problem. Suggest a change. Try it and watch what happens. Improve the idea from what you learn. Carver’s soil lessons and Morgan’s safer signal began with noticing something that needed help.

After slavery ended, unfair rules still separated people by race. Segregation kept Black people and white people apart in schools and many public places. Laws enforcing it were strongest in the South. Unfair treatment also happened in the North and West.

Separate and unequal

Some signs used the words “White” and “Colored.” The second word was used then for Black people. Schools for Black children often had less money, worn books and poorer buildings. Some restaurants refused to serve Black customers at all. Many Black people were also blocked from voting.

Civil rights are rights people should have as citizens, including fair treatment by law. The civil rights movement worked to end segregation and protect those rights, especially in the 1950s and 1960s.

Peaceful ways to act

Many people chose nonviolence: standing up to unfairness without hurting others. This was active work and often dangerous. Protesters could be arrested or attacked.

Different actions worked in different ways:

In February 1960, four Black college students sat at a Greensboro lunch counter that served white customers but refused them. They stayed and returned. More students joined. By summer, the counter served Black customers. The action challenged who could be served.

Changing schools and laws

The NAACP, a civil rights group founded in 1909, fought unfair laws in court. Its lawyer Thurgood Marshall helped win Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The Supreme Court ruled that racial separation in public schools was against the Constitution. Marshall later became the first Black Supreme Court justice.

Children joined the movement too. In Birmingham in 1963, police attacked young marchers with dogs and fire hoses. Television showed the harm to people around the country. Many more people began speaking up.

A court ruling could change a rule, but making schools and towns follow it took more action. The movement joined many people’s efforts across many places.

Ruby Bridges was six when she walked into a school that had kept Black children out. Her story shows how a child and the people around her helped change a school.

A ruling needs action

Ruby was born in Mississippi in 1954, the year of Brown v. Board of Education. Her family moved to New Orleans. In 1960, the city still had segregated schools. A court ordered schools to begin admitting Black children.

On November 14, 1960, Ruby entered William Frantz Elementary School. She was the first Black child there. Angry adults shouted outside. Four federal marshals walked with her for protection. Many white parents took their children out of school.

One classroom

Barbara Henry agreed to teach Ruby. She had come from Boston. For that school year, Ruby was her only student in a separate classroom. Mrs. Henry treated her kindly and helped her keep learning.

Ruby kept returning to school. Her family also faced harm: her father lost his job, and her grandparents had to leave their farm. Some neighbors helped care for the family and showed their support.

Look at the people’s different roles. Ruby attended school. The marshals protected her. Mrs. Henry taught her. Neighbors supported her family. One girl’s courage was part of work shared by many people.

Courage and change

Courage means doing something important even when it is hard or frightening. You do not have to know every feeling Ruby had to recognize her courage. You can look at what she faced and how she kept going.

The next school year, Ruby no longer needed marshals. Other Black children came to the school. Norman Rockwell later painted Ruby walking with the marshals in The Problem We All Live With.

Ruby was first at her school, not first in the whole country. On the same day, three Black girls entered McDonogh 19, another New Orleans school. Nine Black teenagers had entered a Little Rock high school in 1957.

Ruby later wrote children’s books and started a group to help schools teach respect. Her story gives you a close view of how a change in law reached a real classroom.

Rosa Parks’s choice on one bus became part of a whole community’s work. To understand the change, follow both the person and the people who joined her.

The bus rule

In Montgomery, Alabama, Black riders had to sit toward the back. Drivers could order them to give up seats when white seats filled. Parks worked as a seamstress. She was also secretary of the local NAACP and had worked for fairness for years.

On December 1, 1955, Parks sat in the first row of the Black section. The driver ordered her and three other Black riders to stand for a white man. Parks stayed seated. She was arrested.

She was 42, and her choice was about fairness. The familiar story that she was simply an old, tired woman misses her years of civil rights work.

A community stays off buses

Jo Ann Robinson and the Women’s Political Council spread thousands of notices. They asked Black riders to stop using the buses. The boycott began December 5, 1955. A young pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., became its leader.

People still needed to reach work and school. They walked, shared cars and took taxis. Churches helped organize rides. These plans helped people keep refusing the buses. Since most Montgomery bus riders were Black, losing their fares cost the bus system money.

Streets and courts

Parks was not the first person arrested for staying seated. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin had refused earlier in 1955. Colvin and other women challenged bus segregation in court. The courts ruled it unconstitutional in 1956.

The boycott lasted until December 20, 1956: 381 days. That was one full year plus 15 days. Community action and a court case helped end bus segregation in Montgomery.

Parks paid a price. She lost her job, and her family faced threats. They moved to Detroit, where she continued civil rights work. She received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999 and died in 2005.

Martin Luther King Jr. helped people turn a demand for fairness into shared action. He became a pastor, like his father and grandfather. “Dr.” came from his university doctorate; he was not a medical doctor.

Standing firm without violence

King was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929. He was 26 when chosen to lead the Montgomery bus boycott. He learned ideas about nonviolence from Jesus’s teachings and from Mohandas Gandhi, a leader in India.

Nonviolence meant refusing unfair treatment without hurting others. King spoke, marched and went to jail. His home was bombed, and he faced threats. He continued urging people to answer hate peacefully.

Staying peaceful did not mean accepting unfair rules. People could refuse to obey those rules, march or stop buying from a business. The aim was to make unfair treatment change.

A dream before a crowd

On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 people joined the March on Washington. They asked for jobs and freedom. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

He wanted children judged by their character, not their skin color. Character means qualities shown in how you act, such as honesty, kindness and fairness. Think about choosing someone for a group task. Listening to their ideas and noticing how they treat people tells you about character. Skin color does not.

Laws the movement won

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made racial segregation in public places such as hotels and restaurants illegal. It also banned unfair treatment of workers because of race. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 strengthened protection of voting rights. Brave marches in Selma helped push for that law.

King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, aged 35. In 1968, he went to Memphis to support garbage workers. On April 4, a man shot and killed him. He was 39.

Coretta Scott King and many others continued the work. King was a leader within a movement of thousands. People drove cars, made meals, marched and fought court cases. Laws changed through this shared effort. Keeping people’s rights protected remained work for later generations.

African American music has traveled around the world. Its roots include African rhythms, work songs and spirituals created by enslaved people. Music helped people express feelings and stand together.

A voice and an answer

In call and response, a leader sings a line and a group answers. Try making a short call such as “Come along!” Ask a friend to answer it. The two parts work together. This pattern came from African musical traditions and appears in many styles.

In 1871, students formed the Fisk Jubilee Singers to raise money for Fisk University. They carried spirituals into concert halls. They traveled to Europe and sang for Queen Victoria. Their singing helped keep their school open.

Different sounds

The blues developed in the South after slavery. Songs often told of hard times. Gospel grew in Black churches as joyful religious music.

Jazz grew in New Orleans around 1900. Louis Armstrong became famous for playing trumpet. Ella Fitzgerald became a great jazz singer, and Duke Ellington led a famous band.

Jazz players often improvise: they make up music as they play. Start with a short tune you know. Sing it once. Sing it again, changing the rhythm or adding notes. You have used a known tune to make something of your own. Improvising is creating during the performance.

African American musicians also helped create rock and roll, soul and hip-hop. Hip-hop began in the Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s.

Music and fairness

Great talent did not protect musicians from racism. Marian Anderson was refused a Washington, D.C., concert hall because she was Black. In 1939, she sang outdoors at the Lincoln Memorial. About 75,000 people attended.

Some Black performers could sing inside a hotel but could not stay there. Being welcomed on a stage was different from being treated equally everywhere.

Civil rights marchers sang freedom songs such as “We Shall Overcome.” Singing helped people stay brave and feel connected. A shared song gave many voices a way to act together.

Jackie Robinson changed who could play in the modern National and American Leagues. His skill and courage challenged a barrier built on race.

A closed door in baseball

For more than 60 years, owners in those leagues kept Black players out. This color barrier was an agreement among owners, even without a written rule. Black players and owners built teams of their own. The first lasting Negro League began in 1920. Its name uses an older word for Black Americans.

The players were excellent and drew large crowds. In 2020, Major League Baseball recognized seven Negro Leagues as major leagues. Their achievements belong in baseball’s major league history too.

Jackie enters the Dodgers

Robinson was born in Georgia in 1919 and grew up in California. He played four sports in college and served in the U.S. Army. In 1945, he played for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues.

Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers wanted to break the color barrier. He asked Robinson not to hit back at insults or attacks. Robinson agreed.

On April 15, 1947, Robinson played his first Dodgers game. Some fans shouted insults and some players tried to hurt him. He kept playing and won Rookie of the Year that season.

Follow what changed. One team hired Robinson. His play challenged claims used to keep Black players out. Other teams began hiring Black players too. It took until 1959 for every National and American League team to include a Black player. One game did not make all teams change at once.

Remembering the full story

Robinson was not the first Black person ever to play major league baseball. Moses Fleetwood Walker played in 1884, before Black players were pushed out. Negro League stars also played major league baseball. Robinson broke the modern National and American League color barrier in 1947.

He entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. His number, 42, was retired across Major League Baseball in 1997. Players honor him by wearing 42 on Jackie Robinson Day, April 15.

Other athletes opened doors too. Jesse Owens won four Olympic gold medals in 1936. Althea Gibson won Wimbledon in 1957. Wilma Rudolph won three Olympic gold medals in 1960, after having polio as a child.

Katherine Johnson helped astronauts reach space and return safely. Her tools were numbers and careful thinking. She did her work on the ground.

A girl who loved numbers

Johnson was born in West Virginia in 1918. She loved counting and moved ahead quickly in school. She finished college at 18 and became a teacher.

In 1953, she joined the organization at Langley, Virginia, that later became NASA. She worked with Black women mathematicians led by Dorothy Vaughan. Workers there were separated by race. These women did important work while facing unfair treatment.

At the time, computer could mean a person who worked out math problems. Johnson was one of these human computers. Electronic machines later took over more calculating work.

Planning a flight

A trajectory is the path something follows as it moves. Picture a ball tossed into the air. It rises, curves and comes down. Its path changes with the throw’s speed and angle. Rockets need much harder math to work out their paths.

Johnson calculated the flight path for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, in 1961. Her work helped people plan where the spacecraft would go.

In 1962, John Glenn prepared to orbit Earth. NASA used electronic computers to calculate his flight. Glenn asked Johnson to check their numbers by hand. He trusted her skill. She checked them, and his flight succeeded.

Think through the team’s jobs. Machines calculated. Johnson checked the calculations. Glenn flew the spacecraft. Each job helped the mission, but only Glenn traveled into space on that flight.

Many jobs in space work

Johnson also helped with math for Apollo moon missions. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 2020, aged 101.

Mary Jackson became NASA’s first Black woman engineer. Guion Bluford became the first African American in space in 1983. Mae Jemison, a doctor, became the first African American woman in space in 1992.

An astronaut travels in space. A mathematician uses math to solve problems. Johnson’s achievements show how work done far from a spacecraft can help it fly safely.

African American history continues through people’s work today. Some changes become famous “firsts.” Many others happen in classrooms, homes, businesses and neighborhoods.

What a first can show

A first marks someone from a group doing something no one in that group had done before. It can show a new chance opening. It also makes us ask why that chance took so long.

Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman in Congress in 1969. Barack Obama became the first African American president in 2009. He served two terms. Kamala Harris became the first woman and the first Black vice president in 2021. Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman on the Supreme Court in 2022.

These dates describe when people began serving in those roles. They help you place each achievement on a timeline.

Hiram Revels became a senator in 1870. Obama became president in 2009. To find how many years separate those beginnings, subtract:

The offices were different. The count shows how far apart the events were in time. It does not mean Black people stopped serving or making history between them.

People beyond the headlines

Teachers helped children learn. Nurses cared for patients. Farmers grew food. Shop owners served neighbors, and parents raised families. Soldiers, artists and pastors shaped lives too. Their names may never appear in a list of famous firsts.

Imagine researching a neighborhood store. Its owners may have given people work or a place to buy food nearby. Those effects are part of community history, even if the owners never held national office.

Saving and continuing the story

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in Washington, D.C., on September 24, 2016. It helps people learn about this long story through objects, records and people’s experiences.

Changes in law did not finish the work of fairness. People still challenge racism and protect equal rights. African Americans continue making discoveries, creating art, leading and caring for neighbors. History includes the choices people make now.

Two federal holidays honor struggles for freedom and fairness. A federal holiday is set by the U.S. government. Government offices close, and many schools and businesses do too.

Honoring Dr. King

Martin Luther King Jr. Day falls on the third Monday of January. It is close to King’s January 15 birthday. The holiday’s date can change from year to year.

Try finding it for 2027. The Mondays are January 4, 11, 18 and 25. Count the Mondays: first is 4, second is 11, third is 18. King Day falls on January 18 that year.

Coretta Scott King led years of work for the holiday. Singer Stevie Wonder helped bring attention to the effort, and millions signed requests. President Ronald Reagan signed the law in 1983. The holiday was first observed in 1986.

The day is also a national day of service. People collect food, clean parks or help neighbors. Service means doing useful work for others. Taking part connects remembering King with caring for people now.

Celebrating Juneteenth

Juneteenth falls on June 19. Its name joins “June” and “nineteenth.” It remembers the announcement of freedom in Texas on that date in 1865. Black Texans began celebrating in 1866. As families moved, they carried the tradition to other states.

Families celebrate with parades, picnics, worship and reading words about freedom. Red foods and drinks are part of many celebrations. The day brings joy and time to learn about the long struggle for freedom.

Opal Lee helped work for national recognition. In 2016, aged 89, she began a walk in stages from Fort Worth toward Washington, D.C. She also gathered more than a million signatures. President Joe Biden signed the federal holiday law on June 17, 2021.

Count the years between the Texas announcement and the federal law:

People celebrated Juneteenth long before it became a federal holiday. The celebration began in families and communities; national recognition came later. Everyone can join in learning from both holidays.

February is Black History Month, a time to learn about and celebrate African American history. Its beginnings grew from a historian’s concern about what children were missing in school.

Woodson sees a gap

Carter G. Woodson was born in Virginia in 1875. His parents had been enslaved. As a young man he worked in coal mines and started high school late. He kept studying and earned a doctorate from Harvard in 1912.

A historian studies the past using records and other evidence. Woodson saw that many schoolbooks left out Black Americans’ achievements. Children were learning an incomplete story of their country.

In 1915, he helped start a group to study and share Black history. Today it is called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Why February?

In 1926, Woodson started Negro History Week. The name used a word then common for Black Americans. Today we say Black or African American.

The week fell in February for a reason. Lincoln’s birthday is February 12. Douglass chose February 14 as his birthday. Black communities already honored both men during that week. Woodson built his new learning week around a tradition people knew.

The choice was about those celebrations, not February’s length. Knowing the reason helps you understand why this month became special.

A week grows into a month

Schools and churches took part. The learning week spread. In 1976, fifty years after it began, the observance grew into a month. President Gerald Ford asked Americans to honor it. Later presidents also marked the month.

You can count the years from the first week to its hundredth anniversary:

Schools and libraries share books, events and displays. Woodson’s group chooses a theme each year. You might read a person’s life story or build a timeline that connects several people’s work.

Woodson wanted Black history taught as part of American history all year. February makes time for special attention. Learning in March, July or November carries that purpose forward too.

History can begin with a question about a place you know. Your community might be a town, city or neighborhood. Its story includes people who taught, worked, raised families and helped others.

Start with a clue

Look at street, park and school names. A historic marker is a sign explaining something that happened at a place. A church, cemetery, library or museum may hold more clues. Explore places and plan interviews with a grown-up.

Ask questions you can investigate: Who was this person? What did they change? When did it happen? How do we know? Each question points toward something to find.

Choose sources

A primary source is a first-hand record from someone who took part or saw what happened. A letter, photograph or person’s memories can be a primary source. Memories recorded many years later can still be first-hand.

A secondary source explains the past using other sources. A history book often does this. Both kinds can appear in books or on websites. A website holding an old letter lets you read a primary source on a screen.

Follow a school name

Imagine that your school is named for Mary McLeod Bethune. First, find a book about her. It explains her life. Next, ask the librarian why your school chose her name. Then look for an old newspaper report about the naming. If it reports what happened at the time, it can give first-hand evidence of that event.

Keep two questions apart: “What did Bethune do?” and “Why did our town choose her name?” A life story may answer the first. A local school record or newspaper may help with the second.

Listen and share

Prepare a few questions before an interview. You might ask, “What was school like when you were my age?” Listen, take notes and thank the speaker. Write whose memory it is, so you can explain where the story came from.

Some questions have no clear answer yet. Enslaved people were often left out of written records. Family stories, church records and graves may preserve names that other records missed. When evidence is missing, leave the question open.

Add a local event to a timeline beside a national event, such as 1865 or 1963. Make a poster, a short book or a talk. Include what you found and where you found it. A community can remember a teacher or store owner as well as a famous leader.