Black History Month 2025: African Americans and Labor

Black History Month African Americans and Labor

The 2025 Black History Month theme is exciting and wide-sweeping! This theme “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.” The theme is particularly appropriate, since 2025 celebrates the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids by labor organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph. This organization was the first Black union to receive an American Federation of Labor charter.

Labor, of course, includes paid work in factories, the military, government agencies, office buildings, public service, private homes and more. But labor additionally recognizes the unpaid work of building social justice communities, expanding service to others, and developing institutions such as churches, community groups and social groups.

At Daniel Boone Regional Library we are fortunate to maintain a broad collection that highlights the contributions of Black people every day and especially during Black History Month. Here’s just a sampling of titles related specifically to labor:

This wide range of selections illustrates the key role that the history of Black labor has played in the overall history of US labor. Check out one of these informative titles to learn more, and visit our month-long display in the lobby of the Columbia Public Library.

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