Hi John,
Did your iPad receive any damage recently? Has it ever been opened/worked on before? What happened prior to this issue? When you say it is black, do you mean that you cannot see an image on the screen at all, or is the screen displaying an image but there is no light so it is too dark to see?
Have you plugged it into a computer to see if it is recognized by your computer? Have you tried a different cable/charging brick to make sure it is getting power?
I will need a little more information from you in order to give you some possible causes.