April is Black Women’s History Month. Not informally. Not as a suggestion. In April 2016, an Atlanta entrepreneur named Sha Battle filed the paperwork, secured a proclamation from the Atlanta City Council, and made it official, a month dedicated entirely to the contributions of Black women that February and March weren’t doing enough to cover.
The logic was straightforward: Black History Month in February centers the broader Black experience. Women’s History Month in March centers the broader female experience. Neither one fully holds the stories of women who sit at the intersection of both. And that intersection, being Black and being a woman, produces a specific history, with specific achievements and specific erasures, that deserves its own space.
Here’s the full story of how the month was created, the legislative wins that are making it permanent, and the women whose legacies it exists to honor.
Who Created Black Women’s History Month?
Sha Battle is a Georgia native, tech consultant, and serial entrepreneur who has worked with companies including Coca-Cola, Exxon, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 2013, she founded Black Women in Jazz & The Arts Awards. Two years later, she turned her attention to something bigger.
Battle noticed a pattern. When she searched for Black History Month content, the same handful of names came up, almost all men. Women’s History Month had a similar problem in reverse: the most visible stories centered on white women.
“I felt that Black History Month was not enough to celebrate the contributions that Black women have made to world history,” Battle told Bauce Magazine. “Many of our contributions have never been acknowledged.”
So she created the month herself. She completed the paperwork, received a proclamation from Atlanta City Council, and secured a commendation from the governor of Georgia recognizing April as International Black Women’s History Month. The first official observance, including an award show, took place in April 2016.
Battle’s organization, Black Women’s History Month, Inc., operates as a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The 2026 theme is “Black Women: Sharing Our Stories, Honoring Our Legacies.”
When Is Black Women’s History Month?
April. Every year.
The timing is deliberate. It follows Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March), picking up exactly where both leave off. April 2 is also designated as International Black Women’s History Day.
The month is formally recognized at the city and state level in several places, though it does not yet have federal recognition in the United States. That distinction matters, and the push for broader official recognition is ongoing.
Has Any State Made It an Official Holiday?
Yes. In 2024, Virginia became the first state to formally designate April as Black Women’s History Month through legislation. Democratic Delegate Josh Cole introduced House Joint Resolution 8, which passed both the Virginia House of Delegates and the Senate. The resolution designates April 2024 and each succeeding year as Black Women’s History Month in Virginia.
The resolution specifically names Black women who shaped Virginia’s history, including Mary Elizabeth Bowser, who was born into slavery and later served as a Union spy inside the Confederate White House during the Civil War.
Internationally, the NAACP Vancouver Branch has formally recognized the month, and Battle’s organization has received recognition from entities across the country. But a federal designation, the kind that would put Black Women’s History Month on equal footing with February and March, has not happened yet.
That gap between what Black women have contributed and how the country officially recognizes those contributions is kind of the whole point.
Why Do Black Women Need a Separate Month?
Being Black and being a woman is not the same experience as being Black, and it is not the same experience as being a woman. Both Black History Month and Women’s History Month tend to center the voices that are already most visible, and Black women routinely fall into the gap between the two.
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research put it plainly: women’s experiences are not a monolith, and the interconnectedness of racism, sexism, and classism creates a specific set of challenges for Black women that requires specific attention.
This isn’t abstract. When we talk about the civil rights movement, the names that come up first are almost always men, King, Malcolm, Lewis. The women who organized the marches, registered the voters, and held the movement together get secondary billing at best. Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and Diane Nash were the infrastructure.
When we talk about the women’s suffrage movement, the default version of that history centers white women and largely ignores the fact that Black women were fighting for the right to vote while also fighting for their basic humanity. That’s not the same struggle, and collapsing them into one month flattens a story that deserves its full shape.
Black Women’s History Month exists because the specific, intersectional history of Black women in this country, and across the diaspora, was being told in fragments when it was being told at all.
Which Black Women Does the Month Honor?
The short answer: all of them. From Harriet Tubman to Ketanji Brown Jackson, from domestic workers to astronauts, from the women whose names you know to the millions whose names you don’t.
But a few figures represent the scope of what Black women’s history actually looks like:
- Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968, representing Brooklyn’s 12th District. In 1972, she became the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s presidential nomination. Her slogan, “Unbought and Unbossed”, was a statement of principle, and she lived it. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.
- Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed on April 7, 2022, during Black Women’s History Month, as the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The 53-47 Senate vote made her the 116th justice in the court’s 233-year history.
- Mae Jemison became the first Black woman in space in 1992, serving as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
- Fannie Lou Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and became one of the most powerful voices of the voting rights movement, a woman who was beaten in a Mississippi jail for registering to vote and came out of it more determined, not less.
- Mary McLeod Bethune founded what became Bethune-Cookman University in Florida, starting with $1.50 and five students in 1904. She later served as an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935.
These names aren’t just historical trivia. They’re the foundation that current and future generations of Black women are standing on, and many of them got their recognition late, if they got it at all.
How Is Black Women’s History Month Different from Women’s History Month?
Women’s History Month in March covers the full breadth of women’s experiences in the United States and globally. But breadth can also mean that certain stories get buried under others. When organizations celebrate Women’s History Month, the programming often defaults to the most widely known figures, and those figures are disproportionately white.
Black Women’s History Month narrows the focus intentionally. It centers the specific experiences of women of African descent, including African American women, Afro-Latina women, Afro-Caribbean women, and Black women across the global diaspora. That specificity is the point.
It’s also worth noting what the existence of this month says about the previous two. If Black women’s contributions were adequately covered in February and March, there would be no reason for April. The fact that Sha Battle looked at both months and saw a gap wide enough to drive a movement through tells you something about how those months have historically operated.
How Can You Celebrate Black Women’s History Month?
The month’s official organization encourages several forms of participation: educating yourself and others on Black women’s contributions that aren’t typically taught in schools, supporting Black women-owned businesses, amplifying the stories of Black women in your community, and reaching out to legislators to push for federal recognition.
Battle herself has been clear about the advocacy angle. “Reach out to your legislators or senators, any higher ups on the federal ladder, to help push this initiative forward,” she told Essence.
But celebration doesn’t have to be a formal act. Read a book by a Black woman author. Learn the name of a Black woman in history you didn’t know. Talk about the month with the people around you. The whole premise of Black Women’s History Month is that these stories exist and are worth knowing, and that the simple act of telling them is a form of honoring the women who lived them.
The Bigger Picture
Black Women’s History Month is still relatively young, 2026 marks its tenth year. It doesn’t have the institutional backing of February or March. It doesn’t get the corporate campaigns or the Google Doodles. Most people still don’t know it exists.
That’s changing. Virginia’s 2024 legislation is a real milestone. The NAACP’s recognition is another. And every April, the circle of cities, organizations, and institutions that formally observe the month gets wider.
But the fact that it took until 2016 for someone to say, “Black women need their own month,” and the fact that it’s still not federally recognized in 2026, tells you everything about why the month is necessary in the first place. The contributions aren’t new. The recognition is.
Sha Battle built something that should have existed decades ago. The history was always there. Someone just had to give it a name, a month, and a movement.
