Black History Month celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. It began as a way to make sure the achievements, culture and history of Black communities didn’t get left out of the wider story, and to recognise that racism is still very much a reality today.
The theme for 2026 was “A Century of Black History Commemorations”, reflecting on a hundred years of achievements, struggles and cultural impact. We wanted to acknowledge it by making it something the whole company shaped together. So we tried something new: Flash Facts.
How Flash Facts worked
We randomly assigned every human at Human Made a country with a rich Afro-diasporic culture. The task was to spend some time finding ONE interesting piece of information about that country. It could be a musician, a piece of history, a book, a recipe or the story behind the flag. Whatever caught your eye first.
Everyone shared their fact on our internal blog in whatever format they liked: a sentence, a photo, a song or a video link.
The point wasn’t to become an expert overnight. It was to spend five minutes being curious about a culture outside your own, and by the end of the month build a better picture of Black history together, one small fact at a time.
A few minutes of curiosity led to new discoveries, personal stories and thoughtful conversations about Black history and culture. I was taken aback by how many people got involved, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading through all of them. Here’s a selection of what we learned.
Music with a much bigger story
Shipra explored Panama’s contribution to reggaeton, tracing its roots through Afro-Panamanian artists who adapted Jamaican dancehall into Spanish in the 1980s. Many were descendants of Caribbean workers who came to build the Panama Canal, and one of the pioneers, El General, is often called one of the fathers of the genre. Following that musical connection also led to learning about the discrimination those workers faced. In the US-run Canal Zone, mostly White workers were paid on the “gold roll” while mostly Black West Indian workers earned about half as much on the “silver roll”, a divide that reached into housing, schools and healthcare.
Samantha introduced us to Brazilian singer Elza Soares, whose music spoke out against racism, sexism and domestic violence. Her career spanned six decades and more than 30 albums, and she was 85 when she released A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (The Woman at the End of the World), which went on to win a Latin Grammy.
Will shared Lisbon’s batida scene, built by young people with family roots in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé. It starts with Angolan kuduro and mixes in house, techno and rhythms like funaná. Producers taught themselves on cheap laptops and passed tracks around on burned CDs and online forums, before the Lisbon label Príncipe Discos started releasing the music in 2011 and artists such as DJ Marfox and Nídia reached international audiences.
Matt explored the story of Angolan musician and athlete Bonga, who used travel through his sporting career to carry messages for the independence movement. He later recorded his debut album, Angola 72, while in exile in Rotterdam, three years before Angola gained independence. One track, “Mona Ki Ngi Xica”, is sung in Kimbundu and is usually translated as “The Child I’m Leaving Behind”. It became an anthem of the independence movement.
Firdaus introduced us to Cameroon’s makossa music, a dance style from the city of Douala, and Manu Dibango’s 1972 track “Soul Makossa”. Often described as the most sampled African song in history, its influence on songs by Michael Jackson and Rihanna means some of us may have recognised the sound before knowing where it came from.
Vladi answered France with a song instead of words, from Beninese-born singer Angélique Kidjo. And Gareth, who admits he’s not much of a dancer, found out that merengue comes from the Dominican Republic. It’s a partner dance with African and European roots, simple enough to give a go, and it has its own national day on 26 November.
Stories and traditions that connect communities
Ivan shared Grenada’s ’Nancy stories, featuring Anansi, the spider character from West African Akan folklore. Generations of storytellers have adapted these tales to local life and to French Creole, where Anansi is also called Compè Zayen: a little spider connecting cultures across an ocean.
Marian explored the Garifuna community in Belize, whose heritage brings together African and Indigenous Caribbean roots. Every year on 19 November, Garifuna Settlement Day celebrates that history through music, dancing and reenactments of ancestors arriving by boat. Garifuna language, music and dance are also recognised by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
John introduced us to Uganda’s barkcloth-making tradition, one of the oldest cloth-making traditions in the world. Baganda craftspeople make cloth using bark from Mutuba fig trees, wrapping the trunks in banana leaves so the bark regrows within about a year. The material remains part of ceremonies including coronations and funerals, and UNESCO added it to its intangible cultural heritage list in 2008.
Jon shared the history behind Antigua’s Carnival, explaining its origins as a celebration of emancipation. When slavery was formally abolished across the British Caribbean on 1 August 1834, most enslaved people were pushed into a four-year “apprenticeship” that kept them working unpaid for the same planters. Antigua was one of only two colonies to grant full freedom on the day itself. Carnival was created in 1957 to celebrate that date, so behind the costumes, steel pan and calypso is a commemoration of freedom.
Zoe’s contribution on Veracruz, Mexico, gave us another musical connection: the roots of “La Bamba”. Zoe also highlighted traditions in which dancers contribute to the percussion, creating rhythm with their feet as well as their instruments.
Ryan C and Rob both found that Vodun, the religion often called Voodoo, is central to life along the old “Slave Coast”. Ryan learned that Vodun originated in Benin, where it’s an officially recognised religion and thousands gather in Ouidah every January for National Vodun Day. Next door in Togo, Rob discovered that the capital, Lomé, is home to the Akodessawa Fetish Market, the largest Vodun market in the world, and one of the ways Togo keeps its Indigenous identity alive.
Pioneers worth knowing about
Ant introduced us to Senegalese AI researchers Rose Dieng and Moustapha Cissé. Rose became the first African woman admitted to France’s École Polytechnique in the 1970s, and went on to be one of the early researchers on the semantic web, working on how knowledge could be captured and shared between people and software. Moustapha went on to lead Google’s first AI research centre in Africa, in Accra, and later founded a health technology company. Ant’s contribution explored Rose’s work on making knowledge easier to share and Moustapha’s efforts to build AI research and technology that serve communities in Africa. As Ant put it, he found no evidence the two ever met, “so this is a lineage rather than a handover”.
Tom reflected on Diane Abbott’s career, including becoming the UK’s first Black woman MP in 1987 and, today, Mother of the House. His contribution also raised an important point: greater representation matters, but it doesn’t mean racism or unequal treatment have disappeared.
Vojislav shared the story of Boy Ecury, an Aruban student who joined the Dutch resistance during the German occupation. His resistance work included sabotage operations and helping Allied pilots and people in hiding.
Leyla introduced us to Dame Eugenia Charles, Dominica’s first female lawyer and later its Prime Minister. In 1980 she became the first woman to lead a government in the Caribbean, and she served for 15 years. Leyla explored her fight for press freedom and the barriers she broke as a Black woman in law and politics.
Sarah told the story of Pedro Camejo, a Black general in Venezuela’s War of Independence who was said to always be the first to ride into battle. Mortally wounded at the Battle of Carabobo, he rode back to General Páez to say goodbye, telling him he had come to say farewell because he was already dead. A statue of him stands in Caracas today.
Petya discovered that in 2008 Rwanda became the first country in the world with an elected national parliament where women held a majority of seats. Women now hold around two-thirds of the seats in its Chamber of Deputies.
Jenny highlighted two Nobel laureates from Saint Lucia: economist Sir Arthur Lewis and poet Derek Walcott. Two more names to explore, with contributions spanning economics and literature.
Celebrating culture means listening to people, too
Dominic’s contribution on Honduras asked us to consider how Garifuna culture can be celebrated by the tourism industry while communities face threats to their ancestral land. He drew on Christopher A. Loperena’s book The Ends of Paradise, and traced a parallel from the banana industry to modern tourism: Black communities’ labour, land and culture can be central to an economy while the people themselves are treated as outsiders. Appreciating a community’s culture should go alongside listening to its concerns and respecting its rights.
Than explored Suriname’s Maroon communities, formed by people who escaped enslavement and won autonomy from the Dutch through peace treaties in the 18th century. His contribution connected that history of resistance with legal battles to protect ancestral land against logging and mining, cases the Maroons have taken to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and won.
Simon shared the work of Costa Rican artist Adrián Gómez, whose paintings celebrate Black women and children and the Afro-Caribbean culture of Limón. One of his public artworks shows an Afro-descendant girl on a swing in San José. Simon’s reflection encouraged us to notice whose everyday lives appear in art and shared public spaces.
Ryan C’s research into Benin led to the port of Ouidah, on what was known as the Slave Coast. An estimated one million enslaved Africans were shipped from Ouidah alone to the Americas, a history remembered today at the Gate of No Return memorial.
Ryan M not only shared facts about his country, Liberia, founded as a US colony for formerly enslaved and freeborn Black Americans, but also some further context around Black History Month itself. The month was created in the US and centres on the descendants of the transatlantic slave trade. Ryan reminded us that it doesn’t cover every experience of being treated as “Black”: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, for example, have lived in Australia for at least 50,000 years, and their history and culture are celebrated during NAIDOC Week.
Megan shared some eye-opening political history about Guyana, previously colonised by the British, which only gained independence from colonial rule in 1966. She traced how outside interference in the country’s elections in the 1950s and 1960s deepened divisions between its Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese communities.
Fatima says she first got to know Zimbabwe as a kid, watching cricket with her brother but has since learned about Great Zimbabwe, the medieval stone city that gives the country its name (“houses of stone” in Shona), and Victoria Falls, known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, “the smoke that thunders”.
And a few things that made us smile…
I shared the Ethiopian legend of Kaldi, the goat herder said to have discovered coffee after noticing his goats becoming unusually energetic after eating coffee berries. Apparently, goats got the first coffee break. I also learned that Ethiopia follows its own calendar, with 13 months, running roughly seven to eight years behind the Gregorian one.
Owain kicked us off with our first flash fact, about a very rich emperor from Mali. In the 14th century, Mansa Musa is said to have handed out so much gold on his journey through Egypt that he crashed the Egyptian economy. Owain also shared that the Malians were his favourite civilisation to play in Age of Empires IV.
Kirsty Burgoine discovered that Kevin Lyttle, whose “Turn Me On” reached number 2 in the UK charts, was born in Saint Vincent. She also found that the 1812 eruption of Saint Vincent’s La Soufrière volcano inspired a painting by J. M. W. Turner, which now hangs in Liverpool and which she’s seen in person.
Simon’s exploration of Costa Rican history and art kept bringing him back to Limón, where the arrival of Jamaican railway workers in 1872 shaped so much of the region’s Afro-Caribbean culture: “all roads lead back there, all rail roads anyway”. We’ll allow it.
Petya shared a lovely mention for Ncuti Gatwa, who was born in Rwanda and who she absolutely adores, but whose name she can never learn to pronounce. Mike then pointed out that Ncuti himself got told off by his mum for not pronouncing the “N”, so Petya is in good company.
Kirsty S learned that since the mid-1980s, the government of Côte d’Ivoire has asked other countries not to translate its name, so it’s “Côte d’Ivoire” rather than “Ivory Coast”. It also grows around 40% of the world’s cocoa, so there’s a good chance your chocolate started there.
Ryan C shared lots of great facts about Benin, including that it has the highest rate of twin births in the world, and that its UNESCO-listed W-Arly-Pendjari Complex “harbors the only viable population of lions in the region”.
Jenny found that Saint Lucia is said to be the first country named after a woman (Saint Lucy of Syracuse), and that it’s home to Sulphur Springs, billed as the world’s only “drive-in” volcano.
A couple of us had a map moment. Ivan thought Grenada was a mistake, picturing the Spanish city of Granada, before discovering the Caribbean island nation (not to be confused with nearby Saint Vincent and the Grenadines). Leyla confessed she’d assumed Dominica and the Dominican Republic were the same country. They’re not: Dominica is a small, mountainous island between Guadeloupe and Martinique, known as the “Nature Isle of the Caribbean” and home to the Boiling Lake, the second-largest hot lake in the world.
Jon’s fun aside on Antigua: if you’ve ever played Sid Meier’s Pirates!, you’ve probably docked at English Harbour without realising it’s a real UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Sander learned that Colombia holds roughly 10% of all species on the planet on less than 1% of its land, and Sarah found that Venezuela’s Angel Falls is the world’s highest uninterrupted waterfall, dropping 979 metres.
And Pawel, in true Pawel fashion, turned his flash fact on Burkina Faso into a very smart fact sheet. Zoe was inspired to do the same for Veracruz.
Beyond the month
Several people started by saying how little they knew about their assigned country. That willingness to be curious was the point. Thank you to everyone who shared what caught their attention and gave the rest of us somewhere new to start learning.
Flash Facts was one part of how we marked the month. We also used it to review our hiring practices, looking at more diverse ways to advertise our roles and source candidates from a variety of backgrounds. The first step has been to look at diverse job sites and to make sure our EMEA roles are actively advertised in Africa too.
There’s still work to do to create genuinely inclusive workplaces and communities for everyone, regardless of your background, what language you speak or what colour your skin is. So let’s keep that curiosity going beyond Black History Month: support Black-owned businesses and creators, explore the Black history connected to your own city or region, and make learning about Black history and tackling racism something that happens throughout the year.