Black History Month celebrates and commemorates the contributions of Africans to the arts and culture throughout history.
Black History Month is about recognising that, for too long, the history of black people has been told by and through the lens of other people, and so it exists to celebrate and commemorate black history.
In the UK Black History Month was conceived by the Ghanian analyst and activist Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, who came to the UK in 1984 as a refugee and was absorbed in community activism from the start. He saw that black children faced a crisis of identity because schools and institutions were not really teaching the true history of Africa and its people. In order to address this, he set out to produce “an annual celebration of the contributions of Africa, Africans, and people of African descent to world civilisation” (Adai-Sebo in an interview with the UK Black History Month organisation in 2017).
This year the theme of Black History Month is ‘Reclaiming Narratives’, and it serves as an invitation to communities to tell the untold stories of unsung heroes throughout history and today and celebrate Black excellence in the arts, science, politics and everyday life.