Black History Month arrives every year with familiar rituals, yet it hits differently once you start planning trips around it. Classroom posters turn into city blocks, and names from timelines appear on street signs, in murals, and on museum walls. Suddenly, the story of the African diaspora has a skyline, a bus route, and a favorite lunch spot.
Instead of treating history as something sealed inside glass, these cities invite you to walk through it. From federal avenues in Washington, D.C., to a maroon town in Colombia, each city carries museums, monuments, and neighborhood institutions that show how Black histories continue into the present. Let this be your starting point for Black History Month — and every month that follows.
Washington, D.C.
The United States capital carries the weight of many stories, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture gives those stories a home on the National Mall. The museum’s galleries span centuries of Black American life, from the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Reconstruction to the Civil Rights era and contemporary culture, and feature more than 40,000 artifacts. Timed-entry passes remain essential, so plan that visit early in your D.C. stay.
Step outside, and the city itself becomes an open textbook. Pay respects at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, then ride the Metro up to U Street, once nicknamed “Black Broadway,” where theaters, clubs, and small businesses still echo that legacy. Heritage trails, the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum, and community-led walking tours help travelers link the grand symbolism of the Mall with everyday Black life in the District, past and present.
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta wears its role in the Civil Rights Movement right on Auburn Avenue. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park brings together the iconic figure’s childhood home, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and a visitor center that traces the movement through films, exhibits, and oral histories. Walking between those sites, you move through the formative landscape of King’s early life and the grassroots networks that supported him.
A short ride away, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights continues the thread with immersive galleries on U.S. civil rights struggles and global human rights campaigns. Pair it with the locally rooted APEX Museum, which focuses on African and African American history from an Atlanta perspective. Add Historically Black Colleges and Universities, soul food institutions, and public art along the Beltline, and the city becomes a living syllabus on Black leadership, artistry, and imagination.
New Orleans, Louisiana
In New Orleans, Black history pulses through sound as much as text. Congo Square, inside Louis Armstrong Park, sits at the heart of that story. Here, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Africans and Afro-descendants gathered on Sundays to drum, dance, trade, and sustain spiritual practices, seeding musical traditions that shaped jazz and many other genres. Today’s visit includes plaques, festivals, and performances honoring that lineage.
For deeper context, head into Tremé, often described as one of the oldest African American neighborhoods in the United States. The New Orleans African American Museum presents art and history exhibits on Black life in the city, including Mardi Gras Indian culture and Creole heritage. Nearby, the Backstreet Cultural Museum preserves elaborate suits, photographs, and artifacts tied to second-line parades and social aid and pleasure clubs. At the same time, St. Augustine Church anchors a parish with centuries of Black Catholic history.
Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
Salvador, Bahia, carries deep Atlantic history as Brazil’s first capital and a major port in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In the historic center of Pelourinho, pastel facades, baroque churches, and cobblestone lanes sit on ground that once held a pillory where enslaved Africans faced punishment and sale. Today, the area forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site where Afro-Brazilian culture, music, and religion shape daily life.
Inside Pelourinho, the Museu Afro-Brasileiro (MAFRO) focuses on African and Afro-Brazilian histories in Bahia. Its collection includes tools, ritual objects, and the celebrated cedar-wood panels by Carybé depicting Candomblé orixás, all framed by how African cultures reshaped Brazil. Around the neighborhood, spaces like Casa do Benin highlight ties between Bahia and West Africa, while blocos afro, percussion schools, and Candomblé houses of worship bring those histories into the streets through music and ceremony.
San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia
About an hour and a half from Cartagena, San Basilio de Palenque stands as a testament to maroon resistance. Founded in the early 1600s by escaped Africans led by Benkos Biohó, the settlement evolved into a fortified community that secured legal recognition of its freedom in the 18th century. UNESCO recognizes its “Cultural Space” as an example of living heritage, with social structures, healing practices, and oral traditions rooted in Africa.
Visitors today encounter that heritage through community-led tours, drumming and dance performances, and everyday life in a village where many residents still speak Palenquero, a Spanish-based Creole language with African influences. Several operators in Cartagena offer day trips that include meals in local homes, visits to small museums, and conversations with cultural leaders about ongoing efforts to preserve language, music, and land rights.
