• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Black History Month Writing Prompts

Dated firsts, inventions still in use, towns on the map, and marches, speeches and songs, most with a checked fact.

Black History Month Writing Prompts

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  1. On Sundays in old New Orleans, enslaved Black people gathered in Congo Square to trade, drum and dance; write one Sunday there by its sounds.Fact: the square is known for its influence on African American music, especially jazz.
  2. A Black inventor patented a way to send messages between a station and a moving train in 1887; write the first message and the reply.Fact: he held more than 50 patents and worked mostly on trains and streetcars.
  3. Find a place near you that is tied to Black history and write the words for its plaque.Angle: a plaque has room for one date, one place and one reason to stop.

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All 60 prompts

A first 15

  • A week of Black history was first kept in February 1926; write the announcement a teacher reads to her class that Monday. Fact: Negro History Week was created in 1926 and set in the second week of February.
  • A woman from Texas earned her pilot's license in France in 1921 because flight schools at home were closed to her; write her first letter home. Fact: on June 15, 1921, she became the first African American woman to hold a pilot license.
  • A young poet's book is printed in London in 1773, the first book of poetry by an African American; write the bookseller's sign for it. Fact: the book came out on September 1, 1773, and made its author known on both sides of the ocean.
  • Black History Month has been kept across the United States since 1976; write what your school did for its very first one, as you imagine it. Fact: the week of 1926 became Black History Month in 1976.
  • Choose a first from Black history and write about the second person to walk through the same door. Angle: a door opened once is easier to open again. Show the second day, not the first.
  • The first African American senator took his seat in 1870; write that morning as a doorkeeper of the Senate saw it. Fact: he represented Mississippi in the US Senate in 1870 and 1871.
  • The first Black military pilots in the United States began training in Alabama in 1941; write a cadet's first flight. Fact: the first cadet class of the Tuskegee Airmen began training on July 19, 1941.
  • The first Black-owned newspaper in the United States went on sale on March 16, 1827; write its front-page welcome to readers. Fact: Freedom's Journal was published weekly in New York City, starting on that date.
  • For Black History Month, interview someone who was the first in their family to do something, and write what they told you. Angle: ask what was hardest that nobody thinks about any more.
  • In 1821 a New York tailor became the first African American to hold a patent; write the scene where the letter from the patent office arrives. Fact: the patent of March 3, 1821, was for a way of cleaning clothes called dry scouring.
  • In 1864 the first African American woman became a doctor of medicine; write the speech a classmate gives at her graduation. Fact: she qualified at the New England Female Medical College in 1864.
  • Soldiers of a Black regiment were among the first rangers of the national parks; write one soldier's notebook for a summer day in 1899. Fact: in 1899 soldiers of the 24th Infantry served in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.
  • Students at one university kept the first Black History Month in 1970; write the poster they pin up to invite the whole campus. Fact: the first celebration ran at Kent State from January 2 to February 28, 1970.
  • Write a letter from one of the first students of the oldest historically Black college to a cousin back home. Fact: the school began in Philadelphia in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth.
  • Write a timeline of five firsts from Black history that you have checked, with one sentence for each. Angle: give each a year and a place, and say where you found it.

An invention in daily use 15

  • A Black inventor in Cleveland designed a traffic signal with a caution position in 1923; write a morning at a busy corner before it existed. Fact: its arms showed stop and go, and could be raised halfway to mean caution.
  • A Black inventor patented a way to send messages between a station and a moving train in 1887; write the first message and the reply. Fact: he held more than 50 patents and worked mostly on trains and streetcars.
  • A Black inventor who improved the light bulb also drew the patent drawings for the telephone; write a page of his sketchbook in words. Fact: he improved the making of carbon filaments and wrote a book on electric lighting in 1890.
  • A Black inventor's cooling unit for trucks let fresh food travel far; write one crate of peaches' journey before it and after it. Fact: he filed for the patent in 1939 and held 61 patents in all, 40 of them for refrigeration.
  • A Black inventor's machine of 1883 shaped the upper of a shoe to its sole; write the day a factory's hand workers first watch it run. Fact: a skilled hand laster made fifty pairs in a ten-hour day; the machine made 150 to 700.
  • A farm scientist at a Black college in Alabama printed bulletins of advice for farmers; write one page of a bulletin for your own garden. Fact: the experiment station at Tuskegee published over forty practical bulletins for farmers.
  • A letter box lid patented by a Black inventor in 1891 kept the mail dry and safe; write the night one letter spends inside the box. Fact: the lid protected the mail from the weather and from tampering.
  • An ironing board patented by a Black woman in 1892 was shaped to fit a sleeve; describe one everyday object you would reshape, and why. Fact: her board was narrow, curved and reversible, so both sides of a sleeve could be ironed.
  • Around 1753 a young Black man in Maryland built a wooden clock that struck the hours; write the hour it first chimed. Fact: he is reported to have carved each piece to scale from a borrowed pocket watch.
  • Elevator doors once had to be shut by hand; write a ride in a tall building before a Black inventor's patent of 1887 changed that. Fact: his patent for automatically opening and closing elevator doors is dated October 11, 1887.
  • In 1872 a Black engineer patented a device that oiled a steam engine as it ran; write the crew's first trip with no stops for oiling. Fact: by 1899 his lubricator was reported in use on almost all North American railroads.
  • In 1885 a Black furniture seller in Chicago patented a bed that folded up into a desk; write the advertisement for her shop window. Fact: her customers lived in small apartments that could not fit much furniture.
  • In 1966 a Black nurse and her husband invented a way to see who was at the door without opening it; write her first test of it. Fact: a camera looked through peepholes and sent the picture to a monitor inside the home.
  • Pick an invention by a Black inventor that you used today and write it a thank-you note. Angle: say what your morning would be like without it, one step at a time.
  • Write how the safety hood of 1914 might have been explained to a fire chief by the Black inventor who patented it. Fact: air tubes hung near the ground to draw clean air from beneath the rising smoke.

A place on the map 15

  • A Black family leaves the rural South for a northern city during the Great Migration; write what each person carries onto the train. Fact: many people from Mississippi moved directly north by train to Chicago.
  • A school for Black teachers opened in Tuskegee, Alabama, on July 4, 1881; write a student's account of helping to build a classroom. Fact: students put up the earliest campus buildings as work-study.
  • A travel guide printed each year from 1936 to 1966 listed places where Black motorists were welcome; write a family's road trip planned with it. Fact: the guide was started by a postal worker from New York City.
  • The African Meeting House in Boston has stood since 1806; let the building tell what it has heard. Fact: it is the oldest Black church building still standing in the United States.
  • Eatonville, Florida, became a self-governing Black town in 1887; write the first town meeting as the youngest person in the room. Fact: it was incorporated on August 15, 1887, one of the first towns of its kind.
  • Find a place near you that is tied to Black history and write the words for its plaque. Angle: a plaque has room for one date, one place and one reason to stop.
  • Fort Mose in Florida was a town of free Black families in 1738; write a child's first morning there. Fact: no earlier free Black settlement in what became the United States had legal sanction.
  • Harlem in the 1920s was full of new Black music, poems and paintings; write a walk down one block on a Saturday night. Fact: at the time the Harlem Renaissance was called the New Negro Movement.
  • In 1872 Black leaders in Texas bought ten acres in Houston for a park where Juneteenth could be celebrated; write the first picnic there. Fact: the ten acres are known today as Emancipation Park.
  • Mound Bayou, Mississippi, was founded in 1887 by people who had been enslaved; write what its first main street needed, shop by shop. Fact: it began as an independent Black community, and a school followed in 1892.
  • Nicodemus, Kansas, was founded by Black settlers on the open prairie in 1877; write a settler's first night in a house made of sod. Fact: timber was scarce there, so settlers built their homes out of prairie sod.
  • On Sundays in old New Orleans, enslaved Black people gathered in Congo Square to trade, drum and dance; write one Sunday there by its sounds. Fact: the square is known for its influence on African American music, especially jazz.
  • Seneca Village stood where Central Park in New York is now; walk the reader down its main path on a Sunday in 1850. Fact: at its peak the village had about 225 residents, three churches and two schools.
  • Weeksville in Brooklyn was founded by free African Americans; write the notice a newcomer reads on the door of the village school. Fact: the first land was bought in 1838, and the village had its own churches and a school.
  • Write a map in words of a town you would found, as the Black settlers of Nicodemus and Eatonville did, and name its first three buildings. Angle: say which building comes first and what that choice tells about the town.

A march, a speech, a song 15

  • A march on Washington planned by Black leaders for 1941 was called off when its demand was met; write the leaflet that tells marchers why. Fact: Executive Order 8802 of June 25, 1941, banned discrimination in defense industry jobs.
  • Describe a march from Black history that you have seen in a photograph, by the signs people carried. Angle: copy three signs word for word, then write who might have held each one.
  • In 1871 nine students from a Black university in Nashville toured as a choir to save their school; write the night before the first concert. Fact: the Fisk Jubilee Singers set out on October 6, 1871, and sang mostly spirituals.
  • In 1900 five hundred students first performed a new poem called Lift Every Voice and Sing; write the last rehearsal. Fact: 500 students gave its first recital in 1900, and schoolchildren kept singing it.
  • Lift Every Voice and Sing has been called the Black national anthem; write about a song your family or school sings together. Fact: the hymn has appeared in 54 different hymnals.
  • On December 31, 1862, Black congregations gathered to wait for midnight and the Emancipation Proclamation; write the last minute before twelve. Fact: that night was called Freedom's Eve. The proclamation is dated January 1, 1863.
  • On July 5, 1852, a man who had escaped slavery spoke in Rochester, New York, about the Fourth of July; write a listener's letter about it. Fact: the speech was given in Corinthian Hall at a meeting of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.
  • On July 28, 1917, thousands of Black New Yorkers marched down Fifth Avenue without a word; write what one marcher was thinking, block by block. Fact: an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 people marched in silence to a muffled drum beat.
  • Soldiers of a Black regiment in the Civil War refused their pay until it was equal; write a soldier's letter home explaining why. Fact: the 54th Massachusetts had been promised equal pay, and boycotted the pay table instead.
  • Spirituals were passed from singer to singer long before anyone wrote them down; write about a song you know only by ear. Fact: before emancipation, spirituals were an oral tradition handed from one generation to the next.
  • Write a thank-you from a university building to the Black student singers whose concerts paid for it. Fact: one tour of Europe raised an estimated $150,000, used for Fisk University's first permanent building.
  • Write one verse of a song for Black History Month, to a tune everybody knows. Angle: keep the lines short enough to sing while walking.
  • Write the program for a Juneteenth celebration, from the first song to the last dish on the table. Fact: red food and drinks are traditional, and early celebrations had baseball, fishing and rodeos.
  • Write the short speech you would give to open Black History Month at your school. Angle: one date, one place and one reason it matters to you. Leave the rest out.
  • Write the telegram a Black family sends to relatives on December 6, 1865, the day the 13th Amendment was ratified. Fact: the amendment, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, abolished slavery in the United States.

How it works

Each of these Black History Month writing prompts starts from something that happened: a newspaper's first issue in 1827, a patent, a choir's first tour. The fact stands under the prompt, so the writing can begin without a search.

Read the full guide

Writing prompts about Black History Month itself

The month began as a week. Negro History Week was created in 1926 and set in the second week of February; it became Black History Month in 1976. Three prompts go back to those years: a teacher's announcement in 1926, a campus poster in 1970, a school's very first February.

Look up the name behind the fact

The prompts give a year and a place and leave the person for the writer to find. Who patented dry scouring in New York in 1821? Who earned a pilot's license in France in 1921? The answer makes a good opening paragraph.

  • For a place prompt, find the place on a map first. How far it is from the nearest city is a detail worth using.
  • Check any fact you add yourself in a second place before it goes into the final copy.

Questions and answers

What are good Black History Month writing prompts?

Ones that start from a real event. Write the front-page welcome of the first Black-owned newspaper, a settler's first night in a sod house in Nicodemus, Kansas, or the last minute before midnight on December 31, 1862.

Are there Black History Month story ideas here?

Yes. Most prompts ask for a scene with a made-up witness: a doorkeeper at the Senate in 1870, a child at Fort Mose, a family packing for the train north. The fact under the prompt is real and the story is the writer's.

Can I use these as journal writing prompts for Black History Month?

Yes. Several are written for a journal: a first in your own family, a song you know only by ear, an invention you used this morning, the words for a plaque at a place near you.

When is Black History Month?

February in the United States and Canada. In Ireland and the United Kingdom it is observed in October.

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