Black History Essay Topics

Black history is full of fascinating stories, rich culture, great art, and courageous acts that were undertaken within unthinkable circumstances. While Civil Rights events are the most common themes in our studies, we should resist equating Black history only with Civil Rights-era history. This list contains 50 prompts that might lead you into some interesting and little-known information about Black American history.

Note: Your first challenge in studying some of the topics below is finding resources. When conducting an internet search, be sure to place quotation marks around your search term (try different variations) to narrow your results.

  1. Aviators
  2. Black American newspapers
  3. Black Inventors
  4. Black soldiers in the American Revolution
  5. Black soldiers in the Civil War
  6. Buffalo Soldiers
  7. Buying time
  8. Camp Logan Riots
  9. Clennon Washington King, Jr.
  10. Coffey School of Aeronautics
  11. Crispus Attucks
  12. Domestic labor strikes in the South
  13. Finding lost family members after emancipation
  14. First African Baptist Church
  15. Formerly enslaved business owners
  16. Fort Mose
  17. Freedom's Journal
  18. Gospel music
  19. Gullah heritage
  20. Harlem Hellfighters
  21. Harlem Renaissance
  22. Harriet Tubman
  23. Historically Black Colleges
  24. History of rock-and-roll
  25. John Brown
  26. Jumping the broom
  27. Manumission papers
  28. Maroon villages in the eighteenth century
  29. Midwifery
  30. Motown Records
  31. Multi-cultural pirate ships
  32. Narratives by Enslaved People
  33. Nat Turner
  34. Otelia Cromwell
  35. Ownership of property by enslaved people
  36. Purchasing freedom
  37. Ralph Waldo Tyler
  38. Register of Free Persons of Color
  39. Secret schools in antebellum America
  40. Sherman's March followers
  41. Susie King Taylor
  42. The Amistad
  43. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
  44. The Communist Party (involvement)
  45. The Great Migration
  46. The Haitian Revolution
  47. Tuskegee Airmen
  48. Underground Railroad
  49. Urban enslavement (related to buying time)
  50. Wilberforce College, Ohio
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Your Citation
Fleming, Grace. "Black History Essay Topics." ThoughtCo, Aug. 26, 2020, thoughtco.com/black-history-essay-topics-1857065. Fleming, Grace. (2020, August 26). Black History Essay Topics. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/black-history-essay-topics-1857065 Fleming, Grace. "Black History Essay Topics." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/black-history-essay-topics-1857065 (accessed March 28, 2024).