The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans and Labor, 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.
Browsing: Africa
In a recently released video, Williams donned a pair of jeans, workboats, a hardhat and went to work on Salt Marsh Elementary School in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica. Williams, who has won a total of 39 Tennis Grand Slams – including Doubles titles, has also built grade schools in Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. Williams built the Marsh Elementary through a partnership with the nonprofit Helping Hands Jamaica, while the schools in Africa were in conjunction with Build Africa.
President Obama and the first lady travel to Africa at the end of this month, they will receive a rapturous greeting.