Accra, Jan. 28, GNA - The US Ambassador Ms Mary C. Yates would on February 1 2005 launch African American Heritage Month at the at the W.E.B Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture at Cantonments, Accra.

Each February is celebrated as African American History Month in the United States to highlight the achievements of Africans and Africans in the Diaspora.

A statement the American Embassy issued in Accra said in 1926 Harvard Scholar Dr Carter G. Woodson initiated the annual February observance of Negro History Week in the second week of February. By the 1970s, Negro History Week was expanded to become African American History Month in the United States.

The theme for this year's commemoration in the United States is: "The Niagara Movement: Black Protest Reborn, 1905-2005." Dr Du Bois and other African American Leaders founded "The Niagara Movement" to fight racial discrimination in the United States.

It existed from 1905 to 1910, and led to formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and other activist groups, which successfully agitated for changes in U.S. Laws to make them more equitable to non-whites.