Red black trees are binary search trees where each node is colored red or black. Properties of red black trees include: (1) the root and external nodes are black, (2) no two consecutive nodes on any path from the root to an external node are red, and (3) all paths from the root to an external node contain the same number of black nodes. Insertion and deletion of nodes may violate these properties and require rebalancing through rotations and recoloring of nodes.