Black History Month in Wales: 7 Places to Start Learning

Black History Month is marked each October, but finding Welsh history can be harder than finding a general UK reading list. The best place to begin is with sources made in Wales: community programmes, oral histories, national collections, biographies and official data.

This guide gives you seven trustworthy starting points. Each one does a different job, so you can choose events, personal voices, classroom material or careful statistical context without trying to read everything at once. It is a starting-point list, not a claim to contain every Black Welsh story.

Black History Month in Wales: what does it mean?

In Welsh, Black History Month is Mis Hanes Pobl Dduon. The National Library of Wales lists it in its Wales and the World Calendar for October 2026, while Black History Wales runs programmes designed to recognise Black people's contributions to the cultural, social and economic life of Wales.

October creates a useful moment to begin. Black History Wales also makes the year-round principle explicit through Black History Cymru 365: Black history belongs in Welsh history throughout the year, not only during one awareness month.

Seven trusted places to start learning

1. Black History Wales: begin with the living programme

Black History Wales is the clearest first stop for current community-led activity. Its work brings together events, workshops, performances, artists, schools and groups across Wales. Because programmes change, use its current What's On page rather than relying on an old event list shared on social media.

This is also the right source for understanding the 365 approach. The organisation describes Black history as something to teach and celebrate throughout the year, with October as a focal point rather than an endpoint.

2. People's Collection Wales: hear people, not only summaries

The Black History Wales gateway at People's Collection Wales brings together photographs, interviews, film, sound and documents. Its linked collections include African and Caribbean communities in Wales, the 1919 race riots, Windrush Cymru, merchant seamen and notable individuals.

A good method is to choose one local collection, then follow a single interview or object before opening another. That keeps real voices and evidence at the centre instead of turning a large history into a list of famous names.

3. National Library of Wales: follow an archive trail

The National Library's Black History Month calendar page connects the October observance with material in its collections. It is useful when you want to move from a broad theme, such as music, education, empire or protest, towards catalogue records and primary sources.

Archive descriptions are not always written as finished stories. Note the names, places, dates and collection references you find, then search those terms across the Library and People's Collection Wales. The gaps can be as revealing as the results.

4. Dictionary of Welsh Biography: meet people through sourced lives

The Dictionary of Welsh Biography contains more than 5,000 concise biographies. Its Diversity Project is adding work intended to improve how Wales's diverse history is represented.

Use a biography as a map rather than the final word. Check its references, search for the person's own words where they survive, and ask which institutions decided that some lives were recorded more fully than others.

5. Hwb: structured material for learners and families

Hwb's Black History Month page gathers learning and teaching resources, including Our Welsh History, Windrush Cymru, the 1919 race riots and material for discussing race and identity. The wider Welsh history collection places diverse communities within the story of Wales rather than in a separate appendix.

Adults can use these resources too. Their clear questions, short activities and source links make them a practical way to explore a subject with children without asking a young learner to interpret difficult material alone.

6. Amgueddfa Cymru: start with an object or a voice

Amgueddfa Cymru's Collections Online lets you search objects and recorded testimony. One example is its audio recording with Cardiff activist Gaynor Legall, who discusses being Black and Welsh in her own words.

Search by a person, place or community rather than only by the phrase "Black history". Museum records can use older cataloguing language, and current work to collect and reinterpret Black histories means search results can change as collections develop.

7. StatsWales: add context without reducing people to a number

The StatsWales ethnicity dataset, first published in January 2026, provides accredited official statistics from the 2021 Census for Wales and its local authorities. It includes counts and percentages across 19 detailed response categories.

Use it to understand population context, not as a history collection. The Census records the ethnic group that a person felt they belonged to. It cannot explain an individual's life, family, language or sense of Welsh identity.

What does the latest Census figure actually show?

In the 2021 Census, about 28,000 usual residents in Wales were recorded in the high-level category "Black, Black Welsh, Black British, Caribbean or African". That was 0.9% of the population, compared with 0.6% in 2011, according to the Welsh Government's Census summary.

The denominator is all usual residents in Wales, and the label is a grouped category. You cannot use the 28,000 figure to isolate how many people identify specifically as Black Welsh from the other identities grouped within it. Nor should the figure be treated as the size of one uniform community. The detailed data, local patterns and people's own descriptions provide important context.

A simple one-hour Black Welsh history route

1. 10 minutes: check Black History Wales for the current programme and choose one theme.
2. 20 minutes: open one People's Collection Wales interview, photograph set or local collection.
3. 15 minutes: read one Dictionary of Welsh Biography entry or Museum Wales object record.
4. 10 minutes: locate the place in the National Library or Hwb resources.
5. 5 minutes: write down one name, one place and one question to explore next.

This route is deliberately small. It turns an awareness month into a repeatable habit and leaves room for listening rather than rushing through a checklist.

Why learning should continue after October

Black history in Wales includes achievement, creativity, work, family, migration, protest, sport, education and ordinary daily life. It also includes racism, empire and records that were never created or preserved equally. A calm, source-led approach can hold those truths together without making trauma the only frame.

October is a good invitation to begin. The stronger habit is to keep Black Welsh people and communities inside the history of Wales in every month, because they were never outside it.

Sources, further reading and image credits

• Black History Wales and Black History Cymru 365
• People's Collection Wales: Black History Wales
• National Library of Wales: Black History Month
• Dictionary of Welsh Biography and its Diversity Project
• Hwb: Black History Month learning resources
• Amgueddfa Cymru: Gaynor Legall audio recording
• StatsWales: people by ethnic group, Census 2021
• Welsh Government: Census 2021 ethnicity summary
• Feature image: Sculpture of Betty Campbell MBE, Philip Halling, via Geograph and Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
• Source: Lionel Walden via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.