Despite evidence that African Americans are disproportionately affected by drinking to cope relative to European Americans, African American college students' drinking motives remain understudied. Additionally, most research has only examined between-person differences in drinking to cope as a predictor of alcohol use, ignoring within-person variability. In the current daily diary study of 462 African American undergraduates from a historically Black university, associations between episode-specific drinking to cope motives and alcohol use were tested, an approach more consistent with motivational theories of drinking. At baseline, students completed traditional global drinking motive measures; then for 30 days they reported the number of standard drinks they consumed the previous night, and, if they drank, their coping, enhancement, and social reasons for doing so. Students who reported higher mean levels of episode-specific coping motives, on average, consumed more alcohol on drinking evenings. Furthermore, mean episode-specific coping motives, but not global coping motives, predicted average levels of alcohol use. Additionally, coping motives were particularly important for predicting nonsocial (vs. social) drinking. Finally, during evenings for which students reported higher than usual episode-specific coping motives, men consumed more alcohol in both social and nonsocial contexts; in contrast, women reporting higher than usual drinking-to-cope motives only consumed more nonsocial drinks. In conclusion, drinking among African American college students was related to coping motives, particularly among men and in the context of nonsocial alcohol consumption. Moreover, motivational theories of alcohol use may be refined by measuring episode-specific drinking motives that more accurately capture the drinking-to-cope process.