BlackPast.org Fact Sheet

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, April 1, 2011
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, April 1, 2011
Photo by Chen Hualin (CC BY-SA 3.0)

BlackPast.org, Remembered and Reclaimed:
An Online Reference Center for African American History Developed by Dr. Quintard Taylor and Associates

501(c)(3) Status Achieved March 28, 2008

BlackPast.org (www.blackpast.org), founded on February 1, 2007, is broadly conceived to provide reference information on people of African ancestry in the United States and around the world. BlackPast.org is supported by a volunteer staff and nearly 1,000 volunteer content contributors from six continents. The website has the equivalent of 10,000 pages and is free and ungated. New features are added regularly.

BlackPast.org includes:

  1. An online encyclopedia featuring over 7,000 entries which describe people, places, and events in African American history and global African history.
  2. Perspectives Online Magazine which features commentary of important but little-known events in black history often written by the individuals who participated in or witnessed them. To date more than 160 articles have appeared.
  3. The complete text of over 320 speeches by African Americans, other people of African ancestry, and those concerned about race, from 1789 to 2022.
  4. More than 160 full-text Primary Documents including court decisions, laws, organizational statements, treaties, government reports and executive orders.
  5. Major timelines that show the history of people of African ancestry from five million B.C.E. to today including our recently added Visual Timeline covering 1500 to 2023.
  6. Six “Gateway” Pages with links to digital archive collections, African and African American museums and research centers, genealogical research websites, and more than 180 contemporary African and African American newspapers.
  7. Special Features include 101 African American Firsts, Major Black Officeholders Since 1641, The Barack Obama Page, the LGBTQ Page, Landmarks and Monuments Page, and BlackPast.org in the Classroom, which helps educators use the website as a teaching aid. Our most recent additions include the Music Library which lists over 750 songs produced over the past 15 centuries as well as our African Heads of State and Caribbean Heads of State pages.

BlackPast.org Website Statistics:

Total Visits for 2007 (First year)
199,645

Total Visits for 2010
1,316,247

Total Visits for 2023
6,517,722

Total Life-of-Site Visits since February 1, 2007
 56,233,409