Black Love Day (February 13th)

Quick facts
When is it?	Every February 13th
Tagged as:	Attitudes & Emotions Countries & Cultures Life & Living Love People & Relationships
What's the hashtag?	#BlackLoveDay
When was it founded?	1993
Who founded it?	Ayo Handy-Kendi
We first published this page on:	Nov 6th, 2023
We last updated this page:	Jan 15th, 2026

Contents

Show some intentional honor and appreciation for those who are part of the black community by celebrating this important day: Black Love Day! Those who are black can certainly enjoy the elements of this day to foster love within their community. And it can also be a great opportunity to tear down walls and build bridges between black people and those from other backgrounds.

How to Celebrate Black Love Day

Enjoy getting involved and participating in Black Love Day with a wide range of different activities and plans, like some of these:

Embrace the Akoma Symbol

One of the traditional African symbols that can be displayed in honor of Black Love Day is the Akoma, which is representative of love, patience, faithfulness, goodwill and endurance. The symbol has a background that comes from Ghanaian culture, and looks like four hearts that are linked together. In addition to the symbol, the greeting “Nya Akoma” can also be used, which has a meaning that translates to “have a heart and be patient”.

Watch Some Films by Black Directors

For many people, Black Love Day may include supporting people in the black community who have created pieces of art, music or films. This type of expression is an important way that people use their artistic abilities to reveal things about and engage with their culture. In honor of this day, perhaps it would be fun to consider watching some films that have black directors behind them.

Get started with one, or a few, of these:

12 Years a Slave (2013). This film, directed by Steve McQueen, is a biographical drama based on a 1850s slave memoir telling the story of a free black man who gets caught up in slavery.
Selma (2014). This historical drama film is based on the Selma to Montgomery march to support equal rights. Ava DuVernay is the director.
Malcolm X (1992). Spike Lee brings his spin to this biographical story about the legendary African American leader, played by Denzel Washington.
I Am Not Your Negro (2016). This German-American film is a documentary and social critique based on James Baldwin’s unfinished novel, directed by Raoul Peck.

Support Black Owned Businesses

No matter what color a person’s skin is, the celebration of Black Love Day can be made by showing support for and engaging with various black-owned businesses that are established throughout the local community. Those who live in a community where there is less access to (or simply less awareness of) these businesses might want to hop online and do a quick search to see if some pop up in the local area. Or, make an order from a black-owned business that may not be local but offers their products and services through the internet.

Attend the Black Love Virtual Summit

The African American Holiday Association (AAHA) hosts an annual event that encourages people to get more involved with Black Love Day by registering for and attending an online event. The website also offers a number of different resources that bring special opportunities for those who are celebrating the day by hosting various events.

Black Love Day Timeline

17th–19th centuries

Enslaved Africans Forge Communal Love Traditions

Despite family separation under slavery in the Americas, enslaved Africans preserved kinship networks, fictive kin (“aunties,” “uncles”), and mutual aid practices that centered Black care, resilience, and love as tools of survival. [1]

1954–1968

Civil Rights Era Frames Black Love as Collective Struggle

During the modern Civil Rights Movement, figures like Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized agape—selfless love—as a moral force against segregation, linking love of self and community to nonviolent resistance and Black dignity.[2]

Mid-1960s–early 1970s

“Black Is Beautiful” and Black Power Reclaim Black Self‑Love

The Black Power and “Black Is Beautiful” movements promoted pride in Black identity, natural hair, and African heritage, reframing love of Black self and community as explicitly political in response to racism and colorism. [3]

1966

Kwanzaa Introduces an African‑Centered Value System

[4]

1967

Martin Luther King Jr. Calls for a “Revolution of Values”

In “Where Do We Go from Here?”, King urges a shift from materialism and racism toward a “beloved community” based on justice and neighborly love, influencing later Black spiritual and communal visions of transformative love. [5]

1980s

“Buy Black” and Economic Self‑Help Campaigns Grow

Civil rights veterans, Nation of Islam leaders, and community organizers intensify calls to support Black‑owned businesses as a form of self‑love and community defense against disinvestment, unemployment, and the crack epidemic. [6]

1992

Media and Scholarship Highlight Positive Black Relationships

The success of films like “Boomerang” and the publication of works such as bell hooks’s “Black Looks” amplify discussions of Black romance, friendship, and self‑regard, challenging stereotypes and centering Black love in popular and intellectual culture.

History of Black Love Day

Founded in 1993, the root of the spiritual holiday is connected with the honor and celebration of all things related to African and black cultures. Black Love Day was founded by Ayo Handy-Kendi, who was the creator of the African American Holiday Association. Handy-Kendi came up with the inspiration for the day after watching a movie where a black man was murdered by some other black people.

Scheduled for the day ahead of Valentine’s Day, this day offers an opportunity to set some time aside to promote peace and stop violence, not only between black people but throughout the human race.

The aim of Black Love Day has five different spiritual tenets (or loving acts), which include practicing love toward “the Creator, the Self, the Family, within the Black Community, and for the Black Race”. On this day, people are encouraged to perform simple activities that will help to celebrate, atone, and offer forgiveness to self and others.

In celebration of Black Love Day, the African American Holiday Association (AAHA) encourages people to participate in activities that celebrate the black community, including supporting black owned businesses, reflecting on the plight of black people, and working toward building peace within the black community and also throughout the world.

Each year, the organizers of this day encourage participants to celebrate with a special theme that embraces the essence of the day. Past themes have included “Reparations 2 Repair 2 Reconcile 2 Restore 2 the LOVE”, or “Healing the Wounds that Divide”.

Black Love Day brings with it a huge range of opportunity that allows people of all races, ages, and backgrounds to show appreciation for and celebrate the history and spiritual roots as well as the current expressions of black culture!

Facts About Black Love Day

Black Love Day is observed as a time to recognize love as a force for healing, dignity, and collective strength within Black communities.

It draws attention to how love has functioned as a survival tool—supporting family bonds, cultural identity, economic resilience, and emotional well-being in the face of systemic barriers. The facts below explore the historical, cultural, and social realities that give Black Love Day its deeper meaning.

Akoma: A Ghanaian Symbol of Enduring Love

The akoma, often associated with Black Love Day, comes from the Adinkra symbol system of the Akan people of Ghana and represents patience, endurance, and a compassionate heart rather than romantic love alone. Traditionally stamped on cloth or carved into wood, akoma has been used in West Africa for centuries to express emotional resilience and moral character, and has since been adopted in the African diaspora as a visual shorthand for Black love, unity, and spiritual strength.
Black-Owned Businesses Emerged as Survival Institutions After Emancipation

In the late 19th century, Black-owned businesses in the United States arose partly because segregation and discrimination excluded Black consumers from white establishments, turning entrepreneurship into a tool for survival and autonomy. By 1900, historians estimate there were tens of thousands of Black enterprises—barbershops, insurance companies, newspapers, and more—that circulated money within Black communities and laid the groundwork for later hubs like Tulsa’s Greenwood District and Durham’s “Black Wall Street.”
The Racial Wealth Gap Limits the Power of Black Consumer Spending

Despite Black Americans collectively spending more than a trillion dollars annually, they hold only a fraction of U.S. wealth, with the median white household possessing roughly six to seven times the wealth of the median Black household in recent Federal Reserve data. Economists note that because wealth—not income—drives business ownership, investment, and intergenerational security, supporting Black-owned enterprises is often framed as one small but tangible response to the structural forces that produced this wealth gap.
Positive Racial Identity Protects Black Youth Mental Health

Psychological research has repeatedly found that Black children and adolescents who feel pride in their racial and ethnic identity are less likely to experience depressive symptoms and more resilient in the face of discrimination. In multiple longitudinal studies, strong racial identity and a sense of connection to the Black community acted as a buffer between experiences of racism and negative mental health outcomes, suggesting that affirming Blackness can be a protective factor rather than merely symbolic.
Black Churches Functioned as Early Community “Safety Nets”

From the 19th century through Jim Crow, Black churches in the United States served as far more than religious spaces, often operating as informal banks, schools, job centers, and mutual aid hubs. Scholars of African American history note that church congregations pooled funds to bury the dead, support widows and orphans, secure legal assistance, and finance businesses and civil rights campaigns—making the Black church one of the most enduring institutions of communal love and protection.
Mutual Aid Societies Were Early Expressions of Organized Black Solidarity

Long before modern nonprofits, Black mutual aid and benevolent societies formed in cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston in the late 1700s and early 1800s to provide sickness benefits, burial insurance, and small loans. These organizations, such as the Free African Society, founded in 1787, are regarded by historians as some of the first formal Black institutions in the United States and early models of organized, self-directed Black care and community love.
Black Romantic Love Was Once Criminalized Under Anti-Miscegenation Laws

For much of U.S. history, Black people’s intimate relationships were constrained not just by social norms but by law, as anti-miscegenation statutes in many states criminalized marriages and relationships between Black people and whites until the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967. During enslavement, Black marriages also lacked legal recognition, meaning spouses and children could be sold apart at any time—a reality that has shaped how historians understand the persistence and power of Black love and family formation under oppression

Black Love Day FAQs

What does “Black love” mean beyond romantic relationships?

Black love is often used to describe a broad set of caring, affirming relationships among Black people, not just romance. Scholars and commentators use the term to include self-love, familial love, friendship, community solidarity, and political commitment to Black liberation. Historically, Black love has been framed as both an intimate practice and a collective strategy for survival, resistance to racism, and cultural preservation, especially in the face of slavery, segregation, and mass incarceration that have tried to separate Black families and communities. [1]

Why is the idea of Black love sometimes described as political or revolutionary?

Black love is described as political because it affirms the humanity and worth of Black people in societies shaped by anti-Black racism. Historians and cultural critics argue that building loving Black families and communities counters narratives of Black pathology and actively resists systems that have targeted Black kinship—from enslavement-era family separations to discriminatory housing and criminal justice policies. Loving Black people, including oneself, is therefore seen as an act of reclaiming dignity, insisting on survival, and challenging structures that devalue Black life. [2]

How does the Akoma symbol relate to concepts of love and patience in West African culture?

Akoma is an Adinkra symbol from the Akan people of present-day Ghana and Ivory Coast, typically depicted as a stylized heart. In Akan tradition, Akoma is strongly associated with the physical and spiritual “heart” and conveys ideas of love, patience, endurance, goodwill, and tolerance. The related Twi expression “nya akoma” means “take heart” or “be patient,” capturing the idea that true love involves steady character, emotional resilience, and the capacity to bear difficulties without giving up on others. This deeper meaning is often drawn on in African diaspora settings that use Akoma in spiritual or cultural contexts.[3]

Why do many advocates connect Black love with economic empowerment and support for Black-owned businesses?

Commentators and advocacy groups link Black love to economic empowerment because money spent in Black-owned businesses can help circulate wealth within Black communities, which face persistent racial wealth gaps. Research highlighted by economic organizations shows that Black households, on average, hold substantially less wealth than white households, and entrepreneurship is viewed by many Black respondents as a key pathway to opportunity and community stability. Choosing to shop with Black-owned firms is framed as an expression of care and responsibility—strengthening local jobs, building intergenerational assets, and increasing community self-determination. [4]

How has Black love been challenged historically, and what kinds of resilience have emerged?

Black love has been challenged by policies and practices that directly or indirectly target Black families and relationships, including enslavement-era family separations, Jim Crow segregation, discriminatory housing and employment, and mass incarceration. Historians note that, despite these pressures, Black people developed resilient forms of kinship—such as extended family networks, fictive kin, mutual aid societies, and community-based churches—that nurtured affection, child-rearing, and collective care. These structures helped sustain emotional bonds and cultural traditions even when legal recognition or material stability were denied. [5]

Why do some discussions of Black love emphasize mental health and healing from racial trauma?

Mental health professionals and community leaders increasingly frame Black love as a tool for healing from racial trauma, which can show up as chronic stress, depression, anxiety, and internalized racism. Supportive relationships, affirming cultural spaces, and positive representations of Black identity are associated with better psychological outcomes. Emphasizing Black love—toward self, family, and community—can help counter messages of inferiority, reduce feelings of isolation, and encourage seeking help for emotional struggles, especially where stigma or access barriers have limited mental health care. [6]

How do Black filmmakers and artists contribute to the understanding of Black love?

Black filmmakers and artists expand the understanding of Black love by depicting it in its complexity—across romance, friendship, family, community, and political struggle. Film scholars and critics point out that when Black creators control stories and images, they can challenge stereotypes that portray Black relationships as dysfunctional or one-dimensional. Works ranging from historical dramas to documentaries and romantic narratives explore themes like intergenerational care, grief, joy, and solidarity, helping audiences see Black love as nuanced, ordinary, and profound rather than exceptional or marginal. [7]