Black History Month celebrates African Americans’ legacy of struggle and achievement throughout the United States’ episodic 244-year history. For travelers, the February celebration also provides a roadmap for uncovering domestic sites connected to Black history.
Yet travelers in the Caribbean and South America can also find contemporary sites tied to Black history, most notably the transatlantic slave trade through which millions of Africans were forcibly introduced to the Americas.
The sites are both sobering and hopeful. Some chronicle horrific events including slave revolts and the plantation system’s innate cruelty. Others chronicle lesser-explored aspects of post-slavery rebuilding and celebrate examples of progressive initiatives to bring African, American and European colonial cultures into greater harmony.
