Black History Month Speakers For US Corporate Events

Every February, the United States marks Black History Month, recognizing the achievements, culture, and impact of African Americans across four centuries. Booking Black History Month speakers is one of the most direct ways to mark it well, with sessions that tie that history to the work your teams do now, inspiring change that carries well past February.

PepTalk works with historians, DEI leaders, researchers, and artists across the US. Many of them also appear on our diversity and inclusion speakers, social justice speakers and allyship speakers pages, so a February booking can slot into a wider program instead of standing on its own.

A Century of Black History Month

How It Began

Historian Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, now ASALH, in 1915 to correct the absence of Black achievement from public education. The first Negro History Week followed in February 1926, timed to the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. It became a month-long national observance in 1976, when President Gerald Ford urged Americans to recognize “the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans.”

The Centennial and What It Changed

February 2026 marked 100 years since that first Negro History Week. ASALH set the centennial theme as A Century of Black History Commemorations, tracing how the observance grew from classroom lessons into civic and cultural institutions. The ASALH executive summary sets out the full framing.

The centennial also sat alongside the 250th anniversary of US independence, which pushed many organizations toward a fuller retelling of the national story with Black history at its center. That framing has not gone away, and it gives employers and event organizers a clear starting point for the programs that follow.

US and UK Black History Month Fall in Different Months

The US observes Black History Month in February. Black History Month in the UK runs in October, first marked in 1987 by the Greater London Council under organiser Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, inspired by the success of the US observance, and it centers the experiences of Black Britons and the wider African and Caribbean diaspora. If you run events on both sides of the Atlantic, treat them as two separate dates with two different briefs and plan each one on its own timeline.

Black History Month Speakers For Your February Program

Morgan Matthews

Morgan Matthews is a DEI expert, organizational change leader, and people experience specialist who has held senior inclusion roles at Peloton and Pfizer. Her sessions, including From Civil Rights to Corporate Rights: The Evolution of Workplace Equity and Honoring Juneteenth Through Family Legacy and Community, connect historical movements to the way companies operate today. She is a strong choice when the brief asks for measurable progress on workplace equity.

Learn more and book Morgan Matthews →

Apryl Williams

Apryl Williams is an author, researcher, and Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation. Her book Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating examines how race and gender bias get built into digital platforms and algorithms. She is a useful booking for technology and product teams who want the February conversation to land on the systems they are actually building.

Learn more and book Apryl Williams →

Deah Berry Mitchell

Deah Berry Mitchell is a historian, author, and cultural preservationist based in Dallas. As founder of Nostalgia Black Group, Historian-in-Residence for the City of Dallas, and a board member of the National Juneteenth Museum, she uses food, history, and technology to protect Black heritage, from the Freedom Trail app to a VR tour of Dallas’s Deep Ellum neighborhood. Her book Cornbread & Collard Greens traces West African influences on soul food and Southern identity.

Learn more and book Deah Berry Mitchell →

Speech Thomas

Speech Thomas is a Grammy-winning artist, social activist, and cultural curator, best known as co-founder and lead singer of Arrested Development. His documentary 16 Bars and his media platform Black Existence look at both the struggles and the creativity of Black communities worldwide. His sessions can include live performance, which works well when February programming needs a centerpiece event.

PepTalk Fact: Arrested Development won two Grammy Awards in 1993, including Best New Artist 🎶

Learn more and book Speech Thomas →

Patrick Harris

Patrick Harris is an award-winning Detroit teacher, storyteller, and author of The First Five: A Love Letter to Teachers. He helps schools and organizations build inclusive, sustainable learning environments. He suits education clients and any corporate audience whose work touches representation, wellbeing, and equity in learning.

Learn more and book Patrick Harris →

Planning Your Black History Month Program

Speakers for February book out from the fall, so start early. Diaries for the best-known names fill through September and October, and by January you are choosing from whoever is left. If you want a headline session, get the date held before the end of the year and confirm the format afterwards.

It also helps to know what your audience is already searching for. Our look at US Black History Month search trends shows which themes gain traction each year, and our February awareness days and cultural calendar sets out the other dates in the month worth planning around.

Black History Month lands better when it sits inside a year-round commitment. Many organizations pair a February keynote with a Juneteenth session in June, then bring in implicit bias speakers for the practical workshop element in between. Whether you are planning an internal event, a community conversation, or a large-scale conference, these speakers bring informed perspectives that connect history to action.

📩 Looking for Black History Month speakers for your next February program? Tell us your theme and your audience, and we will find the perfect PepTalk expert for your organization. Email us at hello@getapeptalk.com or send us a message via the chat. You can also call us on +1 737 888 5112 (US) or +44 20 3835 2929 (UK). Remember, it’s always a good time to get a PepTalk!