Be sure to check out the Black Studies Research Guide for materials related primarily to African American history, African American literature, Africana studies, the African diaspora, slavery, emancipation, Civil Rights, racism, and colonization. The guide will provide a portal to the Library’s collections relevant to Black Studies.
The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture. Be it the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans that fed Low Country colonies, debates among Black educators on the importance of vocational training, self-help strategies and entrepreneurship in Black communities, or organized labor’s role in fighting both economic and social injustice, Black people’s work has been transformational throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. The 2025 Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor,” sets out to highlight and celebrate the potent impact of this work. More information on this year's theme can be found here.
Black History Month grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. Other countries around the world, including Canada and the United Kingdom, also devote a month to celebrating black history.
To know how much there is to know is the beginning of learning to live. ~Dorothy West
Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. ~Toni Morrison
I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up. ~Rosa Parks
When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. ~Harriet Tubman, on her first escape from slavery, 1845
I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit. ~Ida B. Wells
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it. ~Maya Angelou
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. ~Frederick Douglass
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. ~Oprah Winfrey