Every February, we honor the contributions, recognize the adversities, and celebrate the rich cultural heritage of African American people in the United States. This years national theme is: African Americans and the Arts.

Right now in the United States, we see extremists banning books and censoring curriculum. Many of these attempts are directed at African American studies and Black history.

CFT will be honoring Black History Month by sharing content and curriculum that connects the past with the work for equality that continues today.

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Read

• AFL-CIO: Profiling Black labor leaders and activists

• How Black activists shaped the labor movement, by: Kim Kelly

• NatGeo Kids: Black History Month 

• Black LGBTQ History should be celebrated year round

• Learn about A Philip Randolph, a Black unionist and civil rights activist who organized the first predominantly African American union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. His activism led to Franklin D. Roosevelt issuing an executive order to ban discrimination in the defense industries in World War II, and Randolph also helped plan and organize the 1963 March on Washington.
• Black workers, unions and the labor movement: UC Berkeley Labor Center
• Black Freedom Fighters in Steel 
  Ruth Needleman’s book tells the story of five black organizers, long-distance runners who were indispensable to building the steel workers union as well as the civil rights movement in northwest Indiana.
• For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865
  Robert H. Ziegler’s book analyzes the position of African American workers in the U.S. economy and social order over the past century and a half in this comprehensive study focusing on black workers’ efforts to gain equal rights in the workplace. It deals extensively with organized labor’s complex and tumultuous relationship with African Americans.
• 10 Black teachers who revolutionized the system
• Library of Congress: Experiencing Black Joy through Federal Records
• 25 Books by Black Authors You Should Read This February 

Classroom Curricula: Kindergarten to 12th grade

• Teaching hard history: American slavery
• The African American mosaic at the Library of Congress
• 6 elementary school lessons on civil rights and labor
• Share My Lesson: Black History Month Plans and Resources

Watch

• AFT Leads on Desegregation

• Freedom Schools for Racial Justice

• The AFT’s history of fighting for Civil Rights

• California Newsreels
  DVDs from California Newsreel offer a way to learn about different aspects of labor history and the civil rights struggle. 

1. Oh Freedom After While is about the1939 interracial sharecroppers strike in Missouri.
2. A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom chronicles labor activist Randolph’s efforts to make society more equitable.
3. Randolph is also featured Miles of Smiles, about the first Black trade union — the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which he fought for more than a decade.
4. The hour-long documentary, At The River I Stand, chronicles the fight for working people, highlighting the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.