Given a graph sequence $\{G_n\}_{n\ge1}$ and a simple connected subgraph $H$, we denote by $T(H,G_n)$ the number of monochromatic copies of $H$ in a uniformly random vertex coloring of $G_n$ with $c \ge 2$ colors. In this article, we prove a central limit theorem for $T(H,G_n)$ with explicit error rates. The error rates arise from graph counts of collections formed by joining copies of $H$ that we call good joins. Counts of good joins are closely related to the fourth moment of a normalized version of $T(H,G_{n})$, and that connection allows us to show a fourth moment phenomenon for the central limit theorem. Precisely, for $c\ge 30$, we show that $T(H,G_n)$ (appropriately centered and rescaled) converges in distribution to $\mathcal{N}(0,1)$ whenever its fourth moment converges to 3 (the fourth moment of the standard normal distribution). We show the convergence of the fourth moment is necessary to obtain a normal limit when $c\ge 2$. The combination of these results implies that the fourth moment condition characterizes the limiting normal distribution of $T(H,G_n)$ for all subgraphs $H$, whenever $c\ge 30$.