February is too short to contain the brilliance and beauty of Black Legacies - histories, currents/presents, and futures. So here's this year's list of things I think are neat and you may think are neat, too. I encourage you to return to this totally incomplete list, and add to it, throughout the year. Because Black Legacies deserve to be seen, shared, and celebrated every day.
Black Histories
As the US Government pushes to erase Black histories from our archives, schools, and museums, check out these memorial spaces to donate to or go visit:
- The Legacy Museum. "On the site of a cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were forced to labor in bondage, the Legacy Museum tells the story of slavery in America and its legacy."
- National Museum of African American History and Culture. "The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture."
- The Whitney Plantation. "Whitney Plantation is a non-profit museum dedicated to the history of slavery, situated on a historical sugar, indigo and rice plantation which operated from 1752-1975. The Whitney Institute educates the public about the history and legacies of slavery in the United States."
Resistance is resilience. The New Economy Coalition sent out this Black Co-op History resource list that demonstrates how Black communities have used cooperatives as a strategy for survival and rebellion against racial capitalism.
Black Present(s)
Black Mental Health Village. "Black Mental Health Village is a Black-led liberatory wellness ecosystem that brings clinical, communal, cultural and systems-level healing together so Black communities can live, love, imagine, and build a future beyond survival."
r/BlackLadies thread listing current non-traumatic Black shows. Because representation should work to encompass the wholeness of Black experiences, not just the trauma. Nervous system regulation is resistance. Joy is care.
13th by Ava DuVernay. Whiteness is founded on a lie, and Black bodies are a perennial reminder of that lie. From slavery to Jim Crow to Nixon's War on Drugs and the enduring punitive nature of colonial systems, 13th tells the story of how the US became the most locked up nation in the world.
Black Futures
Rest and restore. Reading Rainbow is back! It's bizarre that compassion and care are coded as radical acts. But a kind word, a story circle, a new story can express such community care. Also check out Chantress Seba, whose music is an incredible companion to your rest/meditation/flow times.
Dream and imagine. Tracee Worley founded Radical Futures as "an experiential futures studio that uses sci-fi, storytelling, and fictional artifacts to help people think differently about what's ending, what's emerging, and what might come next." Change Elemental also just shared Elissa Sloan Perry's "Black Feminist Roots of a Theory of Transformation."
Resist and push at the edges. It is the right of people and communities to defend themselves. It is foolish to believe that there is one right way to ensure survival and thrival into the futures. Southern Movement Assembly has built in protected and defended communities into their blueprint.
Come together. The Together Project is a brand new offering, co-designed by myself and Jessica Radley, founder of Juneteenth in Marshall. This hyperlocal truth and reconciliation for racial healing project is getting off the ground with support from Community Innovation Lab. Together, we can build the worlds we desire and deserve.
