Episode 28: Black History Month Centennial, 1926–2026: One Hundred Years of Black History Month

Ep 28: Black History Month Centennial, 1926–2026: One Hundred Years of Black History Month


Episode Date: February 12, 2026

"If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated."
— Dr. Carter G. Woodson

In 2026, we mark 100 years of Black History Month. One hundred years of intentional remembering, rigorous study, and collective struggle around Black life and Black humanity. One hundred years of insisting that Black history is not a footnote to American history but central, foundational, and indispensable.

In this special centennial episode, Dr. Reiland Rabaka pays tribute to Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the historian and activist who founded Negro History Week in 1926. Born in 1875 to formerly enslaved parents, Woodson understood that the erasure of Black history was strategic and political. He believed that a people cut off from their past are easier to dominate in the present and to deny a future.

Dr. Rabaka explores how Negro History Week evolved into Black History Month by 1976, reflecting broader cultural shifts including the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, and global decolonization. The shift from "Negro" to "Black" reflected a reclamation of identity, dignity, and power.

This episode examines four essential questions: What is Black History Month and where did it come from? Why does it matter for anyone committed to justice and democracy? Why is 2026 such a consequential year? And why does Black History Month remain urgently relevant in the 21st century?

Dr. Rabaka makes clear that Black History Month is for anyone who believes American history should be told honestly. To study Black history is to study the unfinished project of American democracy and to learn how ordinary people forced extraordinary change.

The episode features an original poem, "Sankofa and the Mathematics of Survival," exploring the Akan principle from Ghana, West Africa. Sankofa teaches that knowledge is cumulative, wisdom is layered, and forgetting is dangerous. It means critical retrieval, ethical remembrance, and purposeful return in service of collective renewal.

As we mark this centennial, Dr. Rabaka confronts the danger of misremembering: nostalgia without commitment, reverence without responsibility. The struggles of countless ancestors were not meant to be admired. They were meant to be enacted.

This episode is accompanied by a specially curated Black History Month Centennial playlist below tracing 100 years of Black historical consciousness through music, from spirituals and blues to jazz, soul, funk, reggae, and rap.

At the Center for African and African American Studies, we say that every month is Black History Month.

Soundtrack for Black History Month Centennial, 1926–2026

A note by Dr. Reiland Rabaka:
Black History Month has always been more than a calendar designation; it has been a cultural practice, a ritual of remembrance, and a collective act of democratic imagination. From its origins in 1926 as “Negro History Week,” Black history has been carried not only in books and classrooms, but in sound—in songs sung in sanctuaries and streets, on plantations and picket lines, in juke joints, concert halls, and recording studios. African American music has long functioned as an alternative archive: a living record of struggle and survival, pain and pleasure, loss and love, oppression and possibility.
This companion playlist traces one hundred years of Black historical consciousness through music. It moves from spirituals and blues – sonic testaments to enslavement and emancipation – to jazz, soul, and funk, which voiced twentieth-century battles over citizenship, dignity, and democracy. It carries us into reggae and rap, global and diasporic forms that link Black history in the United States to freedom struggles across the world. Along the way, the playlist insists that Black history is not static or sealed in the past; it is unfinished, contested, and continually remade.
Each song here does historical work. Some remember what was deliberately forgotten. Some name injustices that power prefers to hide. Some imagine futures not yet realized. Together, they remind us that Black History Month is not only about honoring ancestors, but about equipping descendants—about giving us the rhythm, language, and courage to carry the cause forward.
As we mark the Black History Month Centennial, this music invites us to listen deeply, to feel historically, and to recognize that democracy has always had a soundtrack—and Black music has been one of its most powerful instruments.
  • Lift Every Voice and Sing, James Weldon Johnson
    Often called the African American National Anthem, this song is a prayer, a proclamation, and a historical compass, reminding us that Black history is inseparable from faith, struggle, and collective hope.
  • Go Down, Moses, Traditional Spiritual
    This spiritual links biblical liberation to the lived experience of enslavement, illustrating how Black history was first preserved and transmitted through sacred song.
  • Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday
    A haunting indictment of racial terror, this song forces historical memory into public consciousness, refusing silence in the face of violence.
  • A Change Is Gonna Come, Sam Cooke
    Rooted in the Civil Rights Movement, the song captures the emotional landscape of Black struggle—weariness, faith, and unyielding belief in transformation.
  • Mississippi Goddam, Nina Simone
    An uncompromising protest song that names racism directly, embodying Black History Month’s insistence on truth-telling.
  • People Get Ready, Curtis Mayfield
    This track frames history as moral preparation, blending gospel sensibility with political urgency.
  • What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye
    A meditation on war, poverty, and injustice, the song situates Black history within global struggles for peace and human dignity.
  • Say It Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud, James Brown
    An anthem of the Black Power era, affirming identity as a political and historical act.
  • Redemption Song, Bob Marley
    Linking African diasporic history to global liberation, the song reminds us that emancipation is both external and internal.
  • The Message, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
    Rap’s early social realism, documenting urban Black life as historical testimony.
  • Fight the Power, Public Enemy
    A sonic manifesto insisting that historical knowledge fuels political resistance.
  • Alright, Kendrick Lamar
    A contemporary freedom chant, echoing spirituals while addressing twenty-first-century state violence and resilience.
  • Freedom, Beyoncé
    This song situates Black women at the center of historical struggle and future liberation.
  • Glory, John Legend & Common
    A bridge between Civil Rights history and contemporary movements, explicitly linking past and present.
  • We the People…, A Tribe Called Quest
    A reminder that democracy is always contested, and that Black history remains central to defining who “the people” are.
Together, these songs form a sonic syllabus for Black History Month’s past, present, and future—music that remembers, resists, and reimagines the next one hundred years.

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