February is Black History Month, a month to celebrate African American achievements and culture. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), which founded the annual observance, has designated “African Americans and Labor” as the official 2025 theme.
According to ASALH, the 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. Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture. Be it the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans that fed Low Country colonies, debates among Black educators on the importance of vocational training, self-help strategies and entrepreneurship in Black communities, or organized labor’s role in fighting both economic and social injustice, Black people’s work has been transformational throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. The 2025 Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor,” sets out to highlight and celebrate the potent impact of this work.”
This year also “marks the 100-year anniversary of the creation of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids by labor organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, which was the first Black union to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor. Martin Luther King, Jr incorporated issues outlined by Randolph’s March on Washington Movement such as economic justice into the Poor People’s Campaign, which he established in 1967. For King, it was a priority for Black people to be considered full citizens.”
As a foster care provider, Saint Francis Ministries knows well how poverty, race, and lack of access to resources affect the lives of struggling families. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, African American children represent 14 percent of the total child population in the United States and 20 percent of all children in foster care. These and other numbers highlight the perpetual need for more foster care families, especially for African American children.
Learn how to become a foster parent by visiting https://saintfrancisministries.org/foster-care/.
Learn more about Black History Month at https://asalh.org/.
