Black History Month 2025
Theme: Beyond a Month
This year’s Black History Month, celebrated across the UK in October 2025, carried a powerful and important theme — “Beyond a Month.”
Because of course, Black history isn’t confined to just one month. It’s not something we turn on and off each October. Black history is world history — relevant every day, every hour, every second. It shapes our past, defines our present, and inspires our future.
Through our competitions this year, we invited people of all ages and backgrounds to explore what it means to live and celebrate Black excellence, resilience, and creativity beyond a single month. And wow — the response was incredible.
Celebrating Our Winners
A huge congratulations to this year’s winners! Your creativity, thoughtfulness, and passion shone through in every entry. You’ve each contributed something truly meaningful to this year’s celebration.
To everyone who submitted their work — thank you.
You are all winners in our eyes.
It takes courage, pride, and vulnerability to share your art, your voice, and your vision — and we see you. We celebrate you.
Your bravery to express, to create, and to contribute is what keeps this movement alive and thriving.
Thank You
We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who participated, supported, and engaged with this year’s competitions.
From the artists and writers to the performers, educators, and organisers — your energy and commitment made Black History Month 2025 truly unforgettable.
Thank you for reminding us that Black history doesn’t fit inside a single month — it lives and breathes through everything we do, every single day.
Looking Ahead to 2026
We’ll be back next year for Black History Month 2026, continuing to honour, celebrate, and elevate Black voices and stories.
Until then — keep creating, keep learning, keep celebrating, and keep living beyond a month.
1st PLACe
365 BLACK
I am 365 Black!
don’t relegate my glory to 28 days
I AM 365 Black!
Black History is world history
Without black history the mighty pyramids of Giza
could not stand
Ancient Nubians queens plaited their locks in
the city of Kush rich with gold, silver, copper
and precious stones
Strong Egyptian Pharaohs commanded large armies whose brilliance in battle could not be outdone.
I am 365 Black
365 for thousands of years
I have always been 365 black!
When Cudjoe, Nanny and Sam Sharpe fought the oppression of the slave masters
I was black
and Garvey formed the UNIA against all odds
I was black
I am 365 black!
I am 365 black
Don’t relegate me to 28 days
I AM 365 black!
When Martin Luther King defied the color of his skin to declare his dream
I was black
and when bombs went off at churches throughout the south taking innocent lives
I was black
When Angela Davis shook her fist at the world and Malcolm X raged
I was black
And when Bob Marley & the Wailers pulled themselves up from Trench Town
I was still black!
I am as black today as I was then
I don’t have to declare it because you can see it
It’s in the sway of my hips
It’s in the lilt of my voice when my Jamaican explodes
It’s in the nap in my hair
the dark brown of my eyes
the bronze of my skin
and the thickness of my lips.
I am 365 Black!
don’t relegate my glory to 28 or 29 days!
I AM 365 BLACK!
JUDITH FALLOON-REID
2nd Place
AFRICA ARISING
AFRICA ARISING, look settled upon visions inside her childrens eyes, ceasing to be surprising.
For many years upon, upon years, somewhat
forced, huge wealth in people, language, traditions, economically, diamonds, lands into compromising.
In truth limitless, subjected to many evils, without time to breathe, room for thought or time etched in surmising.
Surpassed barriers, erected, perfected skills in surviving, flamboyantly, reality re-wiring
Many her steps, fearfully admiring
Greedily her wealth, still sneakily, siphoning.
Amidst thousands, flat soles, protesting, futile words discussing,
Yet still, within futures, in investing
A creative revolution, a wholesome solution, buffering. A branded evolution garden growing.
A mind-led blowing creative, uprising. Seeds of hope soil-deep sewing.
Once laid up, flat out in a bed of thorns, an unmade bed of lies oppressively, keeping scores
Filled souls up with doubt, hate in darkened roomed walls
Hidden, unashamedly inside dingy stalls,
Erased memory of homelands, filled with natures coconut waters, and mango tree falls
Whilst her children victimised, ostracised, laden in melanin skins, heads held high, arise
Infused, in shea butters, moistured by design, embroidered colours deeply layered, one babe at a time. Libations poured, honouring fallen warriors, in palm wine.
Hunted, pained, wronged yet true to life connected, earth rooted
Undisputed
Creator recruited
Historical existence, by alleged professors refuted —
Yet still we arise, roaring rivers, deeply flowing within, cocoa, sea green coloured eyes
Whilst encompassed betwixt, a hardened battle, drawn upon purpose, once used like cattle
Upchained bodies harshly, observed tearful chattel
How did we settle? Aromas, from white cotton petals
Steamed rage, caged in soul, upon wood fires, desires boiled up like kettles
Souls solid, hope filled, unacknowledged, heard noise
Yet inside dark, hot caves they cried
Billions, throughout his-story, massacred, died
Not only destined, meant to survive
Categorically shielded to win. Healed from within.
For Africa, we are your children past, present and future.
We are children of the rising sun
We are children of the rising sun
We are our future, navigating keenly until we reach our final destination
For we are one regardless of hue, tone or varied saturation
Beyond long days and nights, mixed within cold weather, sunshine and ice,
We are our Ancestors treasure
We are our Ancestors treasure
regardless of the tone or hue, tone or saturation To Mama Africa we stand; B-rave B-old, S-trong, singing, one unity song
Our Hearts…
Our Souls..
Our Minds..
embodied to you we belong– AFRICA’S ARISING!!!
MELONIE BARNABY
3rd place
Beyond the month
We are not a calendar square,
not thirty-one days boxed in red.
We are the drumbeat that carries centuries,
the laughter that outlives chains,
the hymn humming through cracked soil,
roots gripping deeper than empire.
Beyond the month, we are builders of tomorrows—
hands shaping nations they swore we’d never touch,
tongues carving language into survival,
skin kissed by sun that remembers
every migration, every return.
Our history does not end when the banners fall,
when the classrooms move on,
when the headlines grow quiet.
It breathes in the market’s chatter,
in braids patterned like constellations,
in the dance that insists on joy,
in the protest that refuses silence.
We are not a story closed for the season.
We are gospel and griot,
we are saltwater and starlight,
we are yesterday’s dream walking into tomorrow’s dawn.
Call it Black History—
but know this:
we are still writing it,
still living it,
still beyond the month.
DIANDRA-MICHELLE` SCHROETER
4th place
BLACK REVOLUTION
“I’m not your negroe. I’m the man!”–James Baldwin
In the beginning, fifteen hundred million whites called black people negroes and niggers. Who is this Negroe? Who is this nigger? Who is this Black shadow they call a man? He looks like a scoundrel, a criminal, a threat stitched in skin, a shadow cast long and dark. Just like that, the Black shining nigger, bright with life and hope, is hunted, shushed, massacred, as if his light was a sin to be erased from the world. They don’t see a man, only the fear they wear like ARMOUR, only a target painted with the brush of their revulsion.
We, the Black people, were never gendered. Not man, not woman, not even child. For them, nigger was easier, a word that stripped the soul, more convenient than human. And the one called nigger had no right to cry out, to stand tall, to say: I am not your nigger! So the great white princes shot the men-niggers who tried to fight for their fellow niggers. Malcolm X, killed. Patrice Lumumba, killed. John F. Kennedy, killed. Dag Hammarskjöld, killed. Martin Luther King Jr., silenced by a bullet. Fred Hampton, murdered in his sleep. Medgar Evers, gunned down at home. Thomas Sankara, assassinated by betrayal. Steve Biko, beaten to death in a prison cell. Amílcar Cabral, taken before the revolution bloomed. George Jackson, slain behind bars. Marielle Franco, shot in the streets of Rio. And how many more? Whose names never made the headlines, but whose blood still waters our freedom?
Women-niggers were sex objects. Well, that is if you were appealing and exquisite. Exotic woman-nigger. But if a woman-nigger was unpretty and beer-bellied, she was dealt with like man-nigger. And you know what they do to men-niggers. What about boy-or-girl-nigger, they could only camouflaged in corners and plantations and watch the American negroes, their fathers and mothers, build the American dream. In school, they sat at the back. My black sweet boy-or-girl-nigger had no voice. The whole thing, it’s strange, isn’t it? That my skin walks into a room and becomes a weapon. That when the cop sees a beautiful Black panther, he doesn’t see pride, or power, or grace, he just reaches for the gun. Tell me, how did we get here? Can you explain? Why my birthright was a slur pressed into my mouth before I could speak. “Because you’re a nigger,” they said. “You always were.” And nigger meant you’re nothing.
Black and bitchy. War was declared on black people since the day we were called negroes and niggers. We were, we are, judged by the color of our skin, judged by our hair, its coils, its crown, as if beauty were a crime. Judged by the tilt of our nose, the fullness of our lips, the bass in our voice, the sway in our hips. By the way we speak, too loud, too bold, too much. By the way we walk, too proud, too Black, too free. They measure us against mirrors that were never made for us to see ourselves.
hose who stood when standing meant dying. We carry the names like sacred fire. Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, W.E.B. Du Bois, Fannie Lou Hamer. Today, we rise with the fire of our ancestors, and say to the white prince, the crown, the badge, the boardroom seat. We are no longer your niggers. Not your property, not your silence, not your shame. We speak in our own tongues now, walk in our own names, wear our Blackness like a sovereign robe. We are not yours. We never were. We honor Black history for this! It is the Revolution, the Black Revolution, inscribed in struggle, forged in fire. We laud the triumph, won through blood-soaked fields, and centuries of judgment passed. Black history is not memory alone, it is movement, a march that still parrots. It is the Revolution