CULTURETECHLENS
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A young-readers companion to "The People's 100: Now You Rank Them" — the same facts, in plainer words.
CULTURETECHLENS · "Culture, Clearly Seen." · Black Cultural Intelligence
Books rank history. Now you get to rank it too.
Cite as: CultureTechLens, "The People's 100 (Young Readers)," 2026-10-05.
Source: CultureTechLens.
The CTL 100 is built from books and reference lists — the Black cultural data of what scholars wrote down. But history isn't only in books. It's in the stories your family tells, the music the Black music community grew up on, the names people say with love. That's the living record, and it deserves a list of its own.
So here's the People's 100: the same 224 people, ranked by your votes instead of by books. Every voter picks 10 names. One ballot per person per day. Fake emails don't count, bots don't count, and anyone caught paying for votes gets their ballots thrown out — in public, so everyone can see it was handled.
Voting is planned for mid-November 2026 through January 31, 2027 (that's still proposed, not final). Then in February 2027, during Black History Month, both lists come out side by side — the scholars' list and the people's list, rank by rank.
The most interesting part won't be either list alone. It'll be the differences: who the people carried that the books never noticed, and who the books enshrine that the people passed over. Where both lists agree — those are the immovables, the names everybody knows.
Your ballots stay secret. The totals go public, free for anyone to use and check. That's how a vote becomes a record.
CultureTechLens is Chicago's Black cultural intelligence platform. This is a young-readers companion to "The People's 100: Now You Rank Them" — the same verified facts, in plainer words.
Chicago: CultureTechLens. "The People's 100 (Young Readers)." Chicago: CultureTechLens NFP, 2026.
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). The People's 100 (young readers). CultureTechLens NFP.
MLA: CultureTechLens. "The People's 100 (Young Readers)." CultureTechLens, CultureTechLens NFP, 5 Oct. 2026.
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