SPECIALFEATURE
BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2026: THE HISTORY WE’ RE MAKING NOW
100 YEARS AFTER CARTER G. WOODSON LAUNCHED NEGRO HISTORY WEEK IN AMERICA, POLLY HUMPHRIS EXPLORES HOW KENT IS NOT SIMPLY UNCOVERING ITS BLACK HISTORY, BUT HELPING TO PRESERVE THE HISTORY BEING MADE NOW.
On 24 May 1604, a baptism was entered into the parish register of St Cosmus and St Damian in Blean. The child was recorded as Wylmm, the son of Elizabeth, whose ethnicity was described in language that belongs firmly to its period and would rightly be regarded as racist today. In Gravesend, another parish entry records a person named Rich in 1671, while in Rochester, Susana Dafne appears in the records of St Margaret’ s in 1682.
We know these names because the late Kent Archives volunteer Geoff Randerson spent years searching parish registers and other original sources for evidence of Black, Asian and non-European people in early modern Kent. His research began with the Canterbury Cathedral Archives and later extended to collections in Maidstone, Medway and London, with each entry given an archival reference so it could be checked against the original source.
What those records cannot tell us so easily is who these people were beyond that moment on the page. Randerson himself stressed that his research was ongoing and incomplete, and much of it focused on East Kent, meaning there is still more to discover elsewhere across the county. While a register can prove that somebody was there, it cannot always tell us what they thought, how they spoke, what work they did or how they experienced the place they called home.
Fast-forward more than four centuries and that question of what survives, and whose story gets preserved, feels especially timely.
This year marks 100 years since historian Carter G. Woodson and the organisation he founded launched Negro History Week in the United States in February 1926, an initiative that later developed into Black History Month. The UK has its own timeline, with Black History Month recognised here annually since 1987, but the centenary still invites an interesting opportunity to think about how history is created in the first place.
Black History Month UK’ s 2026 theme, Honouring Our Communities, takes that idea further. Rather than focusing only on landmark figures and famous achievements, it asks us to recognise the people whose everyday work, care, leadership and contribution shape communities, while acknowledging how easily ordinary lives can slip outside of conventional historical records.
In Kent and Medway, there is already a strong tradition of trying to make sure that does not happen. Screen Archive South East’ s Medway on Screen community-history project recorded local memories in 2010, with a Black History Month compilation dated 2011 preserving interviews with members of the Medway
18 • www. insidekent. co. uk