February is Black History Month, a time to honor Black people and the Black experience.
Except in parts of the federal government, which is scrambling to accede to President Donald Trump’s orders to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. Last week, the Defense Intelligence Agency, now headed by former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, issued a memo pausing all activities and events related to Black History Month, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth, LGBTQ Pride Month, Women’s History Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day and other “special observances.”
“Identity Months Dead at DoD,” the memo read.
The memo also banned any use of man-hours to host celebrations or events for cultural awareness months, stating that “efforts to divide the force — to put one group ahead of another — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”
In Florida, the state Department of Education and Volunteer Florida promoted Black History Month with student art and essay contests with the theme “Honoring African American Contributions to Florida’s Success.” Four statewide winners will be selected, and each winner will receive a $100 gift card for school supplies and a 1-year pass to Florida State Parks.
Last year. Gov. Ron DeSantis and first lady Casey DeSantis hosted a reception at the governor’s residence in honor of Black History Month and honored the 2024 winners. However, DeSantis and the Florida Board of Education came under fire in 2023 for banning a pilot course in Advanced Placement African American Studies and approving a new K-12 curriculum that critics say whitewashed slavery in the United States and Florida’s role in it and downplayed racial atrocities committed in the state.
Here’s what to know about Black History Month.
What is Black History Month?
Black History Month grew out of a week created nearly 100 years ago to honor two of the most important people in the history of Black emancipation in the United States. It is a month in which schools traditionally feature Black people and their contributions to history and culture, the history of slavery in the United States and the struggle to end it, the Civil Rights era, and the lasting effects in American life today.
Who created Black History Month?

Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, a sharecropper and the son of formerly enslaved and illiterate Virginia parents, was a self-made man. He taught himself enough to start high school at the age of 20 and quickly went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in literature from Brea College and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago. Woodson became the second Black American (after W. E. B. Du Bois) to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard University and joined the faculty there, eventually becoming Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Woodson saw from experience that African American history was being “overlooked, ignored or suppressed.” White institutions and textbooks seemed to have little to no interest in including any Black history curriculums, he said, and he devoted much of his life to encouraging Black Americans to learn more about their own heritage and accomplishments.
After seeing thousands of people lining up in 1915 to see a Black history display at a national anniversary of emancipation, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later renamed the Association for the Study of African American History (ASALH). The next year he founded The Journal of Negro History to publish scholarly articles and book reviews on the African American experience. The journal is still going strong today as The Journal of African American History.
“If a race has no history, if 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.
Woodson died of a heart attack at the age of 74 in 1950. Two schools in Florida are named for him: Carter G. Woodson Elementary School in Jacksonville and Dr. Carter G. Woodson PK-8 in Tampa.
Why did Black History Month start? Why is Black History Month in February?
It started as a week.
Woodson had urged his Omega Psi Phi fraternity brothers to promote Black achievements, according to an essay by Daryl Michael Scott, a Howard University history professor and former ASALH national president, and in 1924 they created the Negro Achievement Week.
But Woodson wanted to go bigger. And instead of creating a new celebration, Woodson expanded on an existing tradition.
He established Negro History Week in February 1926 to coincide with days that Black Americans already were celebrating. Black communities had been commemorating the birthdays of “two great Americans who played a prominent role in shaping Black history” for decades, Scott said: President Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass (Feb. 14). With the help of Black newspapers and civic leaders he promoted the week to add Black history to the traditional celebrations.
“He envisioned the study and celebration of the Negro as a race, not simply as the producers of a great man,” Scott said. “And Lincoln, however great, had not freed the slaves — the Union Army, including hundreds of thousands of Black soldiers and sailors, had done that. Rather than focusing on two men, the Black community, he believed, should focus on the countless Black men and women who had contributed to the advance of human civilization.”
Black History Week caught on and took off. The demand for Black literature and culture rapidly grew in the 1920s and 30s and classrooms across the country demanded Black history curriculums. Woodson continued to promote celebrations but pushed schools to teach Black history all year and use the week to demonstrate what students had learned.
“He spoke of a shift from Negro History Week to Negro History Year,” Scott said.
When did Black History Month begin?
Some people in West Virginia expanded the celebration to the whole month as early as the 1940s, and others in Chicago followed in the 60s. Interest grew nationwide during the civil rights era as Black college students were becoming more conscious of their links with Africa, Scott said.
In 1976, on the 50th anniversary of the first Negro History Week, ASALH changed it to Black History Month.
How to celebrate Black History Month 2025
“The history of the United States is certainly taught and conveyed all year long, but its greatest symbolic celebration occurs on one day, the Fourth of July,” Scott said. “Black History Month, too, is a powerful symbolic celebration. And symbols always stand for something bigger — in our case, the important role of Black History in pursuit of racial justice and equality.”
Black History Month is a time for everyone to celebrate and learn more about Black history and the achievements of Black Americans. Schools from K-12 to universities devote time for all students to study Black history studies, essays, presentations, songs, documentaries and more, and there are multiple public events and festivals.
What is this year’s Black History Month theme?
The theme of this year’s Black History Month is “African Americans and Labor.”
Does Florida celebrate Black History Month?
Black History Month is not a recognized state holiday, although the governor often issues a proclamation honoring it and the Department of Education encourages it in schools.
Florida does recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, the day commemorating the date in Galveston, Texas, when the last enslaved people in the U.S. were finally informed they were free, two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, although Juneteenth is not recognized as a federal holiday.
This year will be the first that Florida honors Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day as a state holiday, to commemorate the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military aviators in what wasn’t yet the U.S. Air Force. The day lands on the fourth Thursday in March, or March 27, 2025.
However, Florida also still honors three Confederate state holidays: Robert E. Lee’s birthday (Jan. 19), Confederate Memorial Day (April 26) and Jefferson Davis’ birthday (June 3).
Is Black History Month a federal or legal holiday?
No. But every U.S. president since Gerald Ford, including Trump, has issued a statement honoring the spirit of Black History Month and in 1986 the U.S. Congress designated the month of February as “Black History Month.”
Ford honored Black History Week in 1975, calling the recognition “a healthy awareness on the part of all of us of achievements that have too long been obscured and unsung.” He issued the first Black History Month commemoration the next year, saying. “we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
On Friday, despite his multiple executive orders stripping DEI programs out of every corner of the federal government, Trump issued a proclamation recognizing Black History Month, listing Black Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas and Tiger Woods.
“This National Black History Month, as America prepares to enter a historic Golden Age,” he said, “I want to extend my tremendous gratitude to black Americans for all they have done to bring us to this moment, and for the many future contributions they will make as we advance into a future of limitless possibility under my Administration.”