1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Black History is American History Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Since before its founding, the United States of America has benefited from and been enhanced by the integral role African Americans have played in our country’s history and contributions to the world. (2) African-American history does not begin in the Americas. It can be traced back to the great empires of West Africa beginning in A.D. 790, which aided the establishment and survival of colonies in America and the New World, generally, and fought against European oppression. (3) African Americans have represented a significant portion of the American population from nearly 20 percent at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, almost all of whom, if not all, were victims of the largest forced deportations in recorded history, the transatlantic slave trade and resulting African diaspora. It is estimated over 10,000,000 free Africans were enslaved between the mid-fifteenth and nineteenth centuries during the diaspora. (4) Slavery was not abolished and African Americans not acknowledged as American citizens until the mid-nineteenth century, servitude did not abate their contributions to the settlement, growth, and development of the United States, which continued through Post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow, industrialization, World Wars and conflicts, innovation and inventiveness, constitutional progress, and every aspect of American society. (5) During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights leaders and activists championed the fight for equal rights, including voting rights, for all African Americans. (6) The seminal case of Brown v. Board of Education, decided May 17, 1954, found that the decades-old policy of separate but equal access to education was inherently unequal, and the segregation of Black public-school students was no longer the law of the land. (7) African Americans continue to fight discrimination, structural racism, economic inequities, and benign