29 Interesting Black History Month Facts for Each Day of February (2024)

The achievements of Black Americans deserve recognition year round. But as we head into Black History Month this February, we can come together to honor those advancements collectively, commit to learning something new, and teach others too.

For instance, did you know these five facts about Black History Month?
• It began as a week in February 1926.
• Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History, started it. He was the son of formerly enslaved parents and a Harvard scholar, and he also founded the modern-day Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) in 1915.
• The second week of February was chosen to coincide with the birthdays of President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
• In 1976, the week expanded to a month, and U.S. President Gerald Ford officially declared February as Black History Month.
• ASALH sets the theme every year. In 2024, it is "African Americans and the Arts."

Here, we’ve gathered 29 additional Black History Month facts for each day of the month on the topics of arts and entertainment, science and tech, sports and athletics, and politics and government. Ranging from historic firsts as Black Americans broke through the societal barriers of segregation and discrimination to landmark achievements that continue to improve all our lives, may these facts spur your curiosity to discover more throughout the month and beyond.

One of the most well-known poets in America in her time, the young literary prodigy published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral after one of her elegiac poems, written in 1770 upon the death of Reverend George Whitefield, gained her international acclaim. Though many aspects of Wheatley's life were tragic (as a young child, she was seized in Senegal/Gambia and sold into slavery in Boston; as an adult, she was freed but died in poverty at age 31 in 1784), her legacy is undeniable.

A legendary soprano born in Natchez, Mississippi, Williams sang for President Rutherford Hayes and First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes in the Green Room. Her performance included “Staccato Polka,” “Ernami, Involami,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” and “Ave Maria.”

Born a slave in Virginia, Johnson was discovered as a street performer and was known for his naturalistic singing style that contrasted with the formal style of other recording artists of the era. In 2014, the Library of Congress added his recording of "The Laughing Song" to the National Recording Registry.

The Ethel Waters Show, her one-night variety special, aired on NBC.

For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, McDaniel won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1940. Seven decades later, when Mo’Nique accepted the same award for her role in Precious, she paid homage to her predecessor in her speech as well as in her dress: a blue gown with gardenias in her hair, a nod to McDaniel's Oscars attire.

The legendary American photographer got his break when Life magazine hired him after publishing his acclaimed photo essay on the life of a Harlem gang leader. Parks remained at the magazine for two decades, where he took photos of everyone from Muhammad Ali to Malcolm X.

Her book Annie Allen chronicles the evolution of a young Black girl into womanhood through poetry.

Born in Alabama in 1898, Lowe is considered the first Black American fashion designer to gain widespread renown. She created a number of designs for high-society women, including one of the most iconic wedding dresses in history: the gown worn by Jacqueline Bouvier when she married then-senator John F. Kennedy. The wedding made national news and was covered by Life magazine. Today, a number of Lowe's dresses are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.

This first in Black history was only one of Poitier's many accomplishments. The legend was also the first Black actor to be nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actor category and, later, the first to win it for his role in 1963's Lilies of the Fields. A trailblazer behind the scenes too, he was the first to insist on a film crew that was at least 50 percent African American during the making of 1969's The Lost Man.

The first National Youth Poet Laureate, Gorman struck a chord with the American people and the world when she performed her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Due to popular demand, Penguin Random House announced a first printing of one million copies each of her first three books.

The patient, Chicagoan James Cornish, lived for 20 years after Williams performed the life-saving emergency surgery. Before that feat, the good doctor founded the first black-owned hospital in 1891, Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, which was also the first interracial hospital in the U.S.

Born into slavery in Missouri during the Civil War, Carver went on to study botany at Iowa State University and was later invited by Booker T. Washington to lead the agriculture department at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School in Alabama. His interest in peanuts as a food and a raw material for everything from skin care products to plastics to axil grease was driven by his work to improve the sustainability of farming. The peanut plant, it so happens, adds beneficial nitrogen to the soil.

After becoming the very first African American and the first woman to graduate with a master's degree from the University of Hawaii, Ball went on to invent a treatment for Hansen’s disease (otherwise known as leprosy). It wasn't until years after her tragic death at the young age of 24 that Ball even got proper credit for her work.

After graduating from college at the age of 18, Johnson began working in aeronautics. Following the formation of NASA, she performed the calculations that sent astronauts into orbit and eventually to the moon in 1969. The main characters of the 2016 movie Hidden Figures are based on Johnson and two other brilliant "human computers" working behind the scenes at NASA during the 1960s-era space race: Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson.

In 1956, West was hired as a mathematician by the U.S. Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia. It was there that she would eventually program a computer to accurately model the Earth, an accomplishment that would become the foundation for the Global Positioning System (GPS) we use today.

Today, we take for granted the precision that lasers bring to the treatment of cataracts, which lead to blindness if not surgically removed. Thank ophthalmologist, researcher, and inventor Dr. Bath for this innovation. In 1986, she invented the laserphaco probe to use in her new procedure for removing cataracts. In 1988, she was awarded a patent (her first of five) for the laserphaco probe, making her the first Black woman to earn a U.S. patent for a medical invention.

In 1987, Mae Jemison, an engineer and physician, became the first Black woman to be admitted into NASA’s astronaut training program. Just over five years later, she flew into space aboard the Endeavour, becoming the first Black woman in space.

During the Olympic games in St. Louis, Poage, a track and field athlete, earned bronze medals in both the 220-yard and 440-yard hurdles.

The Baseball Hall of Famer's first game marked the end of decades of racial segregation in professional baseball. (Minor league player Bud Fowler had previously broken the color barrier in 1878, temporarily opening the door for others. However, in 1887, major and minor league team owners created an unwritten rule not to sign new Black players.)

Just six years after her landmark debut, she made history again as the first Black athlete to win a tennis grand slam tournament at the 1956 French Open. Throughout her tennis career, she won 11 major titles, including Wimbledon and the U.S. National in 1957 and 1958, but tennis wasn't her only game. A golfer too, she also became the first Black American woman to compete in the LPGA in 1963.

Though he only ended up playing 45 games during his career, O’Ree will always be remembered as the National Hockey League’s first Black player, and he continues to fight for more diversity in the sport. In 2022, on the 64th anniversary of his debut, the Boston Bruins retired his number (no. 22) in his honor.

At the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastic Championships in Belgium, Biles won four gold medals. That brought her career medal count to 37, including 27 gold. Many already considered her the GOAT (greatest of all time), but this record-breaking achievement made it official.

The convention movement, which continued through 1864, marked the rise of 19th-century Black activism. The convention led to the formation of the American Society of Free Persons of Color. Bishop Richard Allen, who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was made president of the society, and he worked to coordinate civil rights efforts locally.

Founded by Frederick Douglass, John Mercer Langston, and Henry Highland Garnet, among other prominent leaders, the league pushed for full American citizenship of all Black men and women, as well as voting rights for Black men, as compensation for those who served during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. The organization continued through 1921.

When the Mississippi state legislature sent Revels to fill a vacancy in the Senate during Reconstruction, he became the first Black U.S. senator. Though Revels's term in the Senate only lasted a year, he became an outspoken opponent of racial segregation and broke new ground for Black Americans in Congress.

Marshall, a civil rights lawyer, was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as a justice until 1991.

Chisholm represented her Brooklyn, New York-centered district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Four years later, she became the first Black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States.

After Obama's historic election in 2008, he was reelected in 2012 and completed an 8-year term.

Harris is the first woman, first Black American, and the first South Asian American to take on the role of V.P. in the White House.