Black History Month at 100: Influence Cannot Be Erased, Even When Credit Is Denied

This blog is part of our 2026 Black History Month series. Read more from Natalie Dean and Raphael Bonhomme.

As we recognize the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, this moment calls for more than celebration. It calls for honesty. What began in 1926 as Negro History Week, led by Carter G. Woodson, was a corrective—a response to the systematic exclusion of Black history from public education and national memory. One hundred years later, Black influence is widely consumed, yet still unevenly credited.

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History frames the centennial as an opportunity to reflect on how Black history has been commemorated, contested and preserved over time. That framing matters, especially now. A Gallup poll reports that while most Americans say they are familiar with Black cultural contributions, Black Americans are the least likely to feel those contributions are fully recognized or celebrated (Gallup, 2024). Familiarity without credit is not progress; it is a warning sign.

Culture Travels Easily. Attribution Does Not.

Black cultural influence is global. Contemporary music industries—including K-pop—draw heavily from hip-hop, R&B, Black dance traditions, and fashion aesthetics rooted in Black American communities. These influences shape sound, choreography, visual identity and performance style. What is often missing is consistent acknowledgment of origin.

These examples offer rich opportunities for teaching Black history in the classroom through a lens of cultural literacy and critical attribution.

This pattern is not new. In the 1950s and 1960s, American recording studios routinely exploited Black musicians by reproducing their songs through white performers who were considered more “marketable.” Black artists were denied royalties, ownership, and public credit while their work generated profit elsewhere. Music historians have documented this practice extensively, particularly in early rock and roll and rhythm-and-blues markets.

This history helps students understand why attribution is not symbolic. It is economic.

Cinema as Cultural and Civic Intervention

Black cinema offers one of the clearest examples of influence paired with resistance.

The global success of Black Panther (2018) disrupted long-standing assumptions in Hollywood about audience demand, franchise viability, and the global market for Black-centered storytelling. The film grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide and reshaped how studios approach casting, world-building, and narrative scope (Box Office Mojo, 2020).

Films like this are powerful tools for Black history education, revealing how storytelling intersects with civic identity.

More recently, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025) reinforced that Black storytelling is not a niche genre but a serious cultural and commercial force. The film’s success challenged industry skepticism about Black historical narratives and affirmed that audiences respond to complexity, depth and specificity when stories are well told (Variety, 2025).

Yet perhaps no filmmaker better illustrates how Black creators reshape discourse than Jordan Peele.

Get Out: Horror as Civic Education

Peele’s Get Out (2017) was marketed as a horror film, but its cultural impact extended far beyond the genre. The film offered a sharp critique of so-called post-racial liberalism, exposing how racism adapts rather than disappears. Its central tension did not rely on overt hatred, but on politeness, proximity and control—conditions many viewers, particularly Black audiences, recognized immediately.

Get Out received widespread critical acclaim, earned four Academy Award nominations, and won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2018). Yet, early discourse around the film often attempted to minimize its racial critique, framing it as metaphor rather than commentary. Peele himself rejected that framing, stating clearly that the film was about race, power and exploitation.

For students, Get Out is a powerful media literacy case study. It demonstrates how Black creators use art to interrogate civic myths—and how audiences and institutions sometimes resist that interrogation even while celebrating the work.

Sports and the Anti-DEI Contradiction

Professional sports further expose this contradiction. In the National Basketball Association and the National Football League, Black athletes dominate statistically and commercially. These leagues invest heavily in targeted scouting, early identification, specialized training, and data-driven development systems. These practices are praised as effective infrastructure.

When similar approaches are proposed in education, leadership development, or workforce access, they are often dismissed as ideological or unfair. From a civics perspective, this inconsistency invites analysis of how merit and fairness are selectively defined. From an economics perspective, it raises questions about when excellence is allowed to reshape systems—and when it is treated as an exception.

Social Media: Visibility Without Equity

Social media platforms present themselves as meritocratic, yet documented examples suggest otherwise. Black creators consistently originate trends that drive engagement, advertising revenue and platform growth, but often receive less attribution and financial benefit.