[2] In 1760, the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the black-crowned palm-tanager in his Ornithologie.

[3] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system, and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

[4] When the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition in 1766, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson;[4] one of them was the black-crowned palm-tanager.

Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Turdus palmarum and cited Brisson's work.

[6] The species is now placed in the genus Phaenicophilus that was introduced by the English geologist and naturalist Hugh Edwin Strickland in 1851.

[9] The black-crowned palm-tanager is found throughout the mainland Dominican Republic (including on Saona Island) and in Haiti (except for the Tiburon Peninsula).

It makes a deep unlined cup nest in a tree or bush, often near human habitations.

[1] It is considered common throughout its range, occurs in many protected areas, and has "successfully adapted to human-altered environments".