“One hundred years after Negro History Week was founded, the question is no longer whether Black History Month should exist, but whether it still has the courage to do what it was created to do — to disrupt dominant narratives, challenge structural exclusion, and fundamentally change how history is taught, valued and embedded year-round.”

– Pawlet Brookes MBE, CEO and Artistic Director Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage

February 2026 marks a rare and significant convergence: one hundred years since Negro History Week was founded and fifty years since Black History Month was formally recognised in the United States. These milestones invite celebration, but also critical reflection.  They compel us to ask not only what Black History Month has achieved, but whether it is still equipped to do the radical work it was created to undertake.

Negro History Week was established in 1926 by historian Carter G Woodson as a deliberate challenge to the systematic exclusion of Black people from mainstream historical narratives.  Woodson understood history as a site of power.  If Black people were written out of the past, they were easier to marginalise in the present.  Negro History Week was therefore never intended as a celebratory add-on; it was a corrective, an intervention, and an act of resistance.

Over time, Negro History Week expanded into Black History Month, now widely marked across schools, universities, cultural organisations and local authorities in both the UK and the US.  For many communities, it has provided a vital platform for visibility, education and affirmation.  It has enabled stories that were previously ignored or suppressed to be told publicly, often for the first time.  It has also opened doors supporting Black scholars, artists and cultural workers to access audiences, funding and institutional recognition.

From this perspective, the case for Black History Month remains strong.  Structural racism, cultural erasure and educational inequality have not been resolved.  Black histories continue to be marginalised within national curricula, often appearing as isolated moments rather than integral threads.  Black History Month, at its best, challenges this absence.  It creates moments of focus and urgency, prompting institutions to confront what and who they have excluded.

In the UK in particular, Black History Month has played an important role in local and community-led history making.  It has supported intergenerational dialogue, grassroots archiving and place-based narratives that resist a singular or monolithic account of Black British history.  For young people, seeing Black lives reflected in history can be transformative, offering a sense of belonging and possibility that extends beyond representation alone.

Yet, one hundred years after Woodson’s original intervention, Black History Month is also increasingly contested.  Critics argue that it has become overly symbolic, an annual ritual that allows institutions to signal commitment to diversity without embedding meaningful change.  When Black history is confined to one month, it risks reinforcing the idea that it sits outside the “main” story of the nation.

There is also the question of dilution.  As Black History Month has become more mainstream, its radical edge has often been softened.  Complex, uncomfortable histories of empire, enslavement, resistance and structural violence can be reduced to celebratory narratives that prioritise palatability over truth.  In this context, Black History Month can unintentionally serve institutional comfort rather than structural transformation.

As Brookes argues, Black History Month was never intended to reassure institutions.  If it does not fundamentally change how history is taught, valued and embedded throughout the year, then its purpose must be questioned.  Commemoration alone is not enough.  What is required is accountability – intellectual, cultural and political.

The provocation at the heart of Scrap It, Revamp It is therefore not simply whether Black History Month should continue, but how it must evolve.  What would it mean to reclaim its original radical intent in 2026?  How might Black history be embedded across education, arts and cultural policy rather than isolated within a calendar slot?

These questions sit at the centre of an in-conversation event bringing together Dr Mark Christian and Dr Antonio C Cuyler.  Drawing on research across Africana Studies, sociology, cultural policy, music, leadership and the creative industries, they interrogate the impact of institutionalisation on Black History Month and explore what a reimagined future might look like.

Dr Christian, Professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York, has written extensively on Black identity, Diaspora and the historical legacy of figures such as Frederick Douglass. His work situates Black History Month within longer traditions of Black intellectual resistance across the US and UK.  Dr Cuyler, Professor of Music in Entrepreneurship and Leadership at the University of Michigan, examines access, equity and leadership within cultural organisations, asking who holds power and how creative justice might be achieved in practice.

Together, their perspectives illuminate a central tension: Black History Month remains necessary precisely because the conditions that made it necessary have not disappeared.  At the same time, it must be challenged to do more than it currently does.  The task is not simply to preserve Black History Month, but to revamp it so that it once again disrupts dominant narratives, reshapes institutional practice and embeds Black history as a living, year-round presence.

Perhaps the future of Black History Month lies not in consensus, but in contestation.  As a space that invites critical engagement rather than comfortable celebration.  As a reminder that history is not neutral, and that whose stories are told, and how, remains a deeply political question.

One hundred years after Negro History Week was founded, the challenge remains unchanged: to ensure Black history is not an annual add-on, but a foundational part of how we understand the past, navigate the present and imagine the future.

References

Brookes, P. (2026) Scrap It, Revamp It: Do We Still Need Black History Month? Exhibitionh. Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage. Leicester.

Christian, M. (2025) Frederick Douglass: A Life in American History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Cuyler, A.C. (2021) Achieving Creative Justice in the US Creative Sector. London: Routledge.

Cuyler, A.C. (2023) Access, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations. London: Routledge.

Hall, S. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.

Woodson, C.G. (1933) The Mis-Education of the Negro. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers.

Image credit: Frederick Douglass (c.1879), National Archives.