Black History Month is celebrated every February to honor the achievements of African Americans who have shaped American history. Historian Carter G. Woodson hoped to raise awareness of African American's contributions to civilization by establishing Negro History Week. The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that included both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass' birthdays. The week was later expanded to a month in 1976 during the United States bicentennial.
PHOTO: On March 20, 1969, Black hospital workers at the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston went on strike to protest the firing of twelve employees and to call for higher wages and union recognition.
Photo
West African religious traditions varied widely, ranging from Islam, to various tribal faiths, to some Christianity. The different tribal faiths had a number of common patterns. These included a...
Photo
The music slaves brought with them from Africa came from a variety of different cultures, and it is impossible in the caption for a single image to recount the history of the blending of those...
Photo
An unknown man, Charleston County, playing the fiddle, around 1900. By rights this photograph should be of a banjo, whose origins are indisputably African. As early as the late 17th century, records...
Photo
A 1930 photograph of a group of African American laborers cultivating with hoes. Hoe culture was the predominant method of working the soil in traditional African agricultural societies, and the hoe...
Photo
"Head-toting" of bundles is a distinctly African method of transporting bulky materials, whether it be firewood for the home, cotton from the fields, or produce carried to market. Courtesy of the...
Video
Allison Creek Presbyterian Church Pastor, Sam McGregor, explains, “It’s the greatest story of African American liberation that’s never been told…that centered around the life of Elias Hill, who was a...
Photo
This engraving, also from the 1785 Henry Mouzon map cartouche shows all the main steps in the production of indigo. The plants were harvested in bundles before the stems became woody, then immediately...
Photo
Workers in the fields harvest the indigo plant during the hot summer months. Engraving from a French book, around 1760. Indigo was a good complement to rice as a crop. Indigo grew well in the high...
Photo
African-American workers thresh rice with a flail around 1910, a technique that is probably African in its origins. Lowcountry planters in colonial South Carolina sought out slaves from the Rice Coast...
Photo
An Alice Huger Ravenel Smith watercolor of African-American workers loading rice on a ship to send to market. Note the use of "head-toting" as a way of moving the heavy rice sacks. Courtesy of the...
