Hot black oxide can be done from generic mixtures of caustic soda, sodium nitrite / nitrate, wetting agents and stabilizers or from proprietary mixes. The result of the process is an attractive but very thin and marginally corrosion-resistant, dark black iron oxide finish.
Negro History Week (1926). The precursor to Black History Month was created in 1926 in the United States, when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be Negro History Week..
It wasn't until after the civil rights movement of the 1960s that Black History Week was taken seriously outside of the educated black community and expanded into Black History Month. February was chosen as Black History Month because the birthdays of the esteemed black abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln fall during that month. It's also the month the NAACP was founded. It just so happens that February is the shortest and one of the coldest months of the year.