Black History Month, which takes place in February every year, is celebrated throughout the metro Atlanta area with festivals, storytelling, performances, lectures, film, and much more.

It’s nearly impossible to talk about black history in America at all without mentioning Atlanta. Our city has seen remarkable achievements from the civil rights leaders, musicians, athletes, politicians, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who’ve called Atlanta home.

We’ve put together a list of some of the special events taking place around metro Atlanta for Black History Month in 2024, as well as a few places that focus on African American history and culture all year round.

This post is structured with highlighted events and venues first, followed by a chronological list of Black History Month events in a calendar format. Be sure to scroll all the way to the end to browse all events.

Things to do during Black History Month

We’re still adding events, so please check back throughout February!

♦ Enjoy FREE films + activities at Dekalb Public Libraries

February 1st to 28th, 2025
Multiple locations

Select libraries in Dekalb County are hosting Black History Month events for all ages.
The events include:
* Black History Month trivia
* Take-and-make craft kits for a Black History Month poster or bookmarks
* West African dance performances
* Black History Month Scavenger Hunt

There are also 12 FREE film screenings, of movies like Hidden Figures, The Color Purple, Selma, The Woman King, and more.
More info

♦ Cheer on the Black History Parade in Cartersville

Saturday, February 22, 2025
1:30 p.m.
Downtown Cartersville

The parade will feature floats, car clubs, marching bands, and more. The theme is African-Americans and the Arts.
The Booth Western Art Museum will offer FREE admission to parade participants.
There will also be a pop-up festival at Friendship Plaza, featuring local vendors and a deejay.
More info

♦ See a movie in the AMC Theatres Black History showcase

AMC Theatres will celebrate Black History Month in 2025 with a series of eight fan-fave films that tell stories through the lens of African-American screenwriters, directors, and actors.

Tickets are discounted — as low as $5 to $8.
The showcase runs from Jan. 31 to Feb. 27, 2025.

Film themes include:

• Echoes of greatness: a celebration of Black music icons
• Inspiration and resilience
• Love and Legacy (during Valentine’s week)
• Thrills and laughs

View film titles and local theaters

♦ Dine on soul food at Paschal’s Restaurant

Paschal’s Restaurant was the unofficial headquarters of the Civil Rights Movement, and Martin Luther King was frequently seen there. Photo courtesy of Paschal’s.

Paschal’s Restaurant was a common meeting place for civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King. It has moved from its original location to a spot at 180 Northside Drive, but the walls are still lined with framed photos of influential leaders from the past.

You can read a timeline of Paschal’s history on its website.
This restaurant is famous for its fried chicken.

♦ Head to the Black Heritage Festival in Duluth

Saturday, February 22, 2025
1 to 4 p.m.
Shorty Howell Park (inside the activities building)

Shop with Black-owned businesses, and enjoy food and music that celebrates Black history and culture. Admission is FREE.
Shorty Howell Park is located at 2750 Pleasant Hill Road, in Duluth.
More info

♦ View Black History Month Murals in Brook Run Park

February 1 to 28, 2025
Brook Run Skate Park
4770 N. Peachtree Rd.
Dunwoody, GA 30338

Each year, the Art in the Park program brings a series of original murals to Brook Run Park. You can view the murals at the skate park, all month long. Plus, you can go the city website to see the murals online, view previous murals, and read artist bios.

♦ Attend the Roswell Roots Festival of Black History & Culture

February 1 – 23, 2025
During the month of February, the city of Roswell will feature a series of special exhibits, cultural performances, demonstrations, and events devoted to Black history and culture.

And just wow, there is so much to do!
You really need to check the website and the calendar to see it all.

Many of the events are free, including library story hours, art exhibits, and musical performances. The ticketed events are very affordable.
You can download a complete calendar of events and brochure on Roswell’s city website.
Visit the website

♦ Support Black-owned businesses at the Atlanta Black Expo

February 22 & 23, 2025
11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Georgia World Congress Center

The expo will feature a wide range of Black-owned businesses in all industries. You’ll be able to walk around and shop, as well as enjoy workshops, speakers, a food court, a kids area, and more.

There will be 120+ exhibitors and over 20 speakers this year!
More info

♦ Celebrate culture at the Lawrenceville Arts Center

Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025
4 to 6 p.m.
Lawrenceville Arts Center
Strickland Grand Stage
147 E. Crogan Street, 30046

Local students and school arts programs will showcase their creativity and artistry around the theme of Black history, culture and arts.
More info

♦ Blackout: a pop-up market and open mic night

Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025
5 p.m.
Aurora Theatre
128 E. Pike St.
Lawrenceville, GA 30046

Now in it’s 4th year, BLACKOUT is a FREE celebration of culture, creativity, and commerce — featuring local performers and Black-owned businesses. Truly an uplifting event.
Get more info or sign up for an open mic slot

♦ Attend a Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church

Each Sunday, visitors from around the neighborhood and around the globe attend services at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The church has an open-door policy and welcomes anyone who wishes to visit.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Counse, under a Creative Commons license.

♦ See a new show, Bust, at the Alliance Theatre

Feb. 13 to March 16, 2025
Woodruff Arts Center

This month, you can see the play Bust, described as a ground-breaking, form-defying, laugh-out-loud new drama from Pulitzer-finalist playwright Zora Howard.

SYNOPSIS:
Retta and Reggie are enjoying their usual evening on the porch when a longtime neighbor is pulled over by the police just before turning into his driveway. Everything goes as expected — until the unexpected happens. Humor, suspense, and surrealism converge in this gripping interrogation of what it costs to be Black and free.

Tickets start at $25, and there are student discounts available.
More info + tickets

♦ Participate in Gwinnett’s Black Heritage Night

Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025
6 to 8 p.m.
Gwinnett Justice Center
75 Langley Dr., Lawrenceville

This cultural festival is FREE and open to the public — everyone is welcome. Black Heritage Night features cultural performances, soul food, exhibits, art, and more.
More info
Reserve a free ticket on Eventbrite

♦ Take a road trip to explore Civil Rights landmarks

The National Park Service has created a We Shall Overcome travel itinerary, listing places of historic significance in 19 states. The landmarks include churches, homes, protest sites, and and other landmarks related to the Civil Rights Movement.

Oddly enough, only 4 sites are listed for Georgia — but we have many more venues you can explore around Atlanta, in our list below. But since the idea is to take a road trip, you can head to nearby sites in Alabama, including Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma. 

The website CivilRightsTrail.com also lets you explore significant sites by state, and is a better travel guide, in our opinion.

Places to visit & explore during Black History Month

♦ The APEX Museum

APEX is an acronym for African-American Panoramic Experience. The mission of the APEX Museum is to accurately interpret and present history from an African-American perspective.

♦ National Center for Civil and Human Rights

Exhibits connect the American civil rights movement to the current global human rights movement.
This February, the Center will host story times, activities, and giveaways on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the month. All activities are included with a ticket purchase to The Center. If you are a family of 4, remember to take advantage of the Family 4-pack discount!
More info on Black History Month activities 

 

♦ South-View Cemetery

Take a FREE self-guided walking or driving tour of South-View Cemetery, which was chartered after the Civil War by former slaves who were banned from white cemeteries. Martin Luther King was originally buried in South-View, before being moved to the grounds at the King Center.

 

♦ Oakland Cemetery’s African American Burial Grounds

Each year, Oakland offers FREE tours during Black History Month, but they fill up quickly– so if you’re reading this early, in January, RESERVE NOW.
If you can’t get a tour reservation, you can read about the African American Grounds online and then visit on your own. Oakland Cemetery is ALWAYS FREE. The best way to receive advance notice about when free tour reservations open up in January is to subscribe to our newsletter.

Ollivette Allison was executive director of the Carrie Steele-Pitts Home (the first orphanage for African-American children) from 1976 until 2009. It’s been estimated that she cared for more than 5,000 children at the orphanage.

♦ George Washington Carver Park (Cartersville)

This site on Allatoona Lake was established in 1950 as a Georgia State Park designated especially for Black people.  It is now part of the Bartow County parks system.

On a warm day, you can walk along the water, or bring a picnic meal and use the pavilion or outdoor tables.
Read about the history of the park before you visit

 

♦ Atlanta History Center

A variety of special programming features the contributions of African Americans this February.
More info
Do you have a credit or debit card from Bank of America?
That gets you FREE admission to the History Center on Feb. 3rd and 4th, through the Museum on Us program.

 

♦ Hammonds House Museum of African-American Art

Open Thursday thru Sunday
Adult admission $10
Seniors $7
Students $5
Under age 12 FREE

The Hammonds House Museum is located in a Victorian-era house in Atlanta’s West End. It is devoted to fine art created by people of African descent. The permanent collection contains more than 350 works dating from the mid-19th century, created by artists from America, Africa, and the Caribbean. It is located at 503 Peeples St SW.

The Hammonds House Museum, in Atlanta’s West End, is dedicated to fine art created by people of African descent.

 

♦ Atlanta University Center Historic District

The Atlanta University Center District comprises a group of the country’s most important institutions of higher learning for African Americans. This national historic landmark in Southwest Atlanta includes Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and Morehouse School of Medicine.

Many civil rights movement leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., attended these schools, which have been a progressive force among Atlanta’s black community.

If you’ve never made a visit to this historic district, maybe it’s time to explore this February!

Benjamin Mays was a former sharecropper’s son who made the monumental rise to president of Morehouse College, where he is laid to rest. He is credited with laying the intellectual foundations of the Civil Rights Movement.  (Photo made available through the Creative Commons Universal Public Domain Dedication)

♦ Martin Luther King Historic Sites

The Birth Home of Martin Luther King, Jr. is closed for renovations, but you can go inside the Visitor Center. You can also stop by the tomb of Reverend and Mrs. King, with its eternal flame. And the MLK  World Peace Rose Garden is open, although there’s not much in bloom right now. Here’s a complete list of MLK historic sites under the National Park Service.

 
Dr. and Mrs. King are laid to rest at the King Center’s outdoor campus. Photo: Atlanta on the Cheap

♦ The Herndon Home Museum

Completed in 1910, the Herndon Home was the residence of Alonzo Herndon, Atlanta’s first black millionaire. Herndon was a former slave who became a barber after the Civil War; he invested his income in real estate and later founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, located in Sweet Auburn. 

The house is a two-story, 15-room mansion in the French Beaux-Arts style, located in Atlanta’s Vine City neighboorhood. For more information, see the Herndon Home Museum website.
NOTE that tours have been suspended, but you can view the outside of the building.

The Herndon Mansion was home to Atlanta’s first black millionaire. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia contributor Keizers, under a creative commons license.)

Movies to watch & speeches to listen to

Whether you want to be inspired or entertained, you can put together your own watch list for Black History Month.

Black stories and voices on film

Reelgood.com has a list of films and TV shoes that stream for FREE and showcase Black stories. The list includes titles like Bel-Air, Judas and the Black Messiah, If Beale Street Could Talk, Fruitvale Station, and Dear White People — plus more.

The major subscription-based streaming services also have curated collections of films that focus on Black history and stories, and feature Black actors and filmmakers.

Browse movies here:
♦ Netflix — Black Lives Matter collection
♦ Hulu — Black Stories collection
♦ Amazon Prime Video — Amplify Black Voices collection
♦ HBO — Celebrating Black Voices (these selections stream for FREE)

You may also be interested in our big list of FREE streaming services.

Notable speeches in Black history

These are worth a watch or a listen — especially the dramatic recreations of historic speeches.

♦ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Listen to the famous 17-minute I Have a Dream speech in its entirety, courtesy of NPR.

♦ President Barack Obama
He’s known as one of the greatest presidential orators in modern history, so it’s hard to choose just one. But for Black History Month, we’re going with A More Perfect Union, a 2008 campaign address about America’s long struggle with race (37 minutes). But go ahead and watch the 3-minute Amazing Grace clip from the eulogy for Rev. Pinckney too.

♦ Frederick Douglass
Listen to a trained voice actor read the words of the famous abolitionist, in the What to the Slave is the Fourth of July speech. It was delivered on July 5, 1852.

♦ Sojourner Truth
Watch a Black actress deliver the Ain’t I A Woman? speech that Sojourner Truth delivered in 1851, as a freed slave. In this talk, she compares experiences of Black women to white women.

Black History Month calendar of events

NOTE: We’re still adding BHM events for February, so check back!