Why do they need a whole month?!? You can count the number of Black Americans that significantly contributed to American history on one hand. And that's not an attempt to be snarky, that a simply statement of fact. In fact, if your child goes to public school, look at their curriculum next black history month. Odds are it will be Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King and maybe Thurgood Marshall and Obama. Any others mentioned may have been important in their fields (athlete's, musicians, etc) but hardly changed history.
James Armistead, Crispus Attucks, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Madame C.J. Walker, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Norbert Rillieux, Mary McLeod Bethune, James Weldon Johnson, Rosa Parks, Jesse Owens, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Muhammed Ali, Whitney Young, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Oprah Winfrey...