More than 10 years ago, a New Zealand high school student came across a University of Washington website. It was meant for an
African-American studies course. That discovery — from the other side of the world — revealed a demand for black history beyond the college campus.

When Professor Quintard Taylor got an email from New Zealand, he realized he was onto something big.

“At first, I sort of bristled at the comparison to Wikipedia, but we actually want BlackPast to be a kind of Wikipedia for African-American and African history,” said Taylor.

BlackPast.org gets close to 4 million visitors a year, but traffic goes up dramatically during Black History Month – reaching a half-million users in February. An American History professor, Taylor says BlackPast captures part of a larger American story that was ignored until a half-century ago.

“Society did not recognize African American history — and let me say by extension, society didn’t recognize African American history as important because it didn’t recognize black people as important,” said Taylor. ...