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