11 Great Black History Month Events

Take a trolley tour through the lives and struggles of several prominent black New Yorkers in honor of Black History Month. Here, you and your family can examine how the diversity, racism, and activism that took place on the very streets of New York has brought the city closer to equality with Green-Wood Historian Jeff Richman. Along with highlighting the lives and efforts of abolitionists and notable black New Yorkers, Richman will take you to the monuments of courageous men and women who accomplished so much despite their struggle for equality. Educate your children, educate yourselves, and take a trolley ride through Brooklyn to here the tales and see the sights of so many who fought for freedom in New York and in America.

Join Activist New York and the Museum of the City of New York for their intergenerational celebration, Black Future. This event highlights specific people and organizations that aim to secure the lives and communities of African Americans. Here, the whole family can take part in this celebration with art projects, scavenger hunts, and topical talks that look back on the Civil Rights movement and forward to Black Lives Matter.

This Valentine’s Day celebrate both the love and life of all people at the Harlem Fine Arts Show (HFAS). The HFAS is the largest traveling African Diasporic art show in America and has a way of bringing all sorts of people together to celebrate fine art. Join in HFAS’s 10th annual show and appreciate art, culture, and cultivate community with the entire family. This year HFAS will salute African Americans in Technology, honor particular individuals with Lifetime Achievement Awards, and show a variety of great art. Hosted by the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club, the HFAS opening night can be a great way to celebrate African American culture with the family and give back to the community.

Pay tribute to the many African lives lived in colonial New York with a visit to the African Burial Ground located downtown. With both civic engagement and the work of many historians and anthropologists, this rediscovered burial ground was named a national monument and the fifteen-thousand bodies of free and enslaved Africans discovered six feet under Broadway have been preserved. Pick a day this month and take the family out to America’s current earliest and largest African Burial ground. Learn about the lives lived at the monument’s research center, explore the memorial’s interpretive center, and honor the lives of so many colonial African Americans this February.

With Welcome To Harlem experience all that Harlem has to offer with the entire family. Offering tours led by native Harlemites, experience the Jazz, Gospel music, art, and food that this historic hamlet in New York City is known for. Celebrate Black History Month and take your pick from the variety of tours that Welcome To Harlem has to offer.

Maybe you and your family are more auditory learners rather than visual. Maybe you’ve seen enough welded sculptures and painted canvases. If so, head downtown. Battery Park City Authority is holding a feature poetry performance by poet, singer/songwriter, actress, writer, and educator Lacresha Berry. Following her performance, Berry will be joined by Black Gotham Experience’s (BGX) Kamau Ware and the two will unpack the significance of her art. During this segment guests will get to hear how her work responds to BGX’s popular walking tours that highlight African Diaspora in downtown New York since 1625.

Search for freedom in Queens with the Bowne House Museum and Historical Society. Here, families of all ages can celebrate Black History Month by learning about Queens’ local abolitionists and the part they played in the Underground Railroad. Two of Queens local families and abolitionists were the Parsons and Bowne families. While the kids participate in a historic African American Craft and learn about the history surrounding Queens, tour the Borne house and learn about the abolitionist movement that took place in your own city.

Appreciate the lives of notable African American figures with Photojournalist Fred Watkins’ exhibit at the X Gallery. The X Gallery is showcasing a month long exhibit featuring the Watkins’ photography that has captured the key moments in the lives of high profile African Americans over the past three decades. Take a walk back through time in this photo gallery with your family. Gaze upon the influential figures who have left their handprints on society and celebrate these phenomenal human beings this month.

Learn more about African American culture and Black History this February with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This month, the center is proud to work with AfroCROWD to host Black New York Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Here, the whole family  is invited to the Schomburg Center to research, learn, contribute, and edit content concerning Black History for the BlackWikiHistory Month campaign. You and your children can — with the the rich resources available at the Schomburg Center and the Wikipedian assistance available — learn about, advance the knowledge of, and give back to the African American community.

With the Queens Botanical Garden (QBG) kids of all ages can learn about the man and legend, George Washington Carver. As an individual who contributed so much to the field of Botany, your child will get to learn how plants played a lasting roll in Dr. Carver’s early and late life while painting plants and concocting a healing lotion this February. Celebrate Black History Month with QBG and learn all about the great man and Botanist that Dr. Carver truly was.

Visit the Upper West Side’s Seneca Village and learn about the neighborhood’s rich African American History. Urban Park Rangers will interpret turning points in history and provide insight into the sweeping changes that affected the residents of Seneca Village in the 1800s pre-Central Park. Once an important community of black New York residents these Urban Park Rangers will shed light on the artificial and natural transitions that changed the demographic of Seneca Village and affected the African American community located there.