Tag Archives: PRESENT

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 19 — Titus Kaphar

Titus Kaphar didn’t grow up visiting art museums. He didn’t even start seriously painting until he was in his 20s. But in each of his works, there’s a depth of history well beyond his years.

When his art history professor announced to the class that they would skip the section of their text on African art, Titus wasn’t shy about taking a stand and pointing out the slight he felt as the only black student present, but the class moved on anyway.

“Drawing the Blinds,” 2014

It was a galvanizing and crystallizing experience for the budding young artist in that it inspired him to create new artistic narratives that juxtaposed African faces with the images art historians DID focus on, and that it was such a microcosm of what he felt had happened in American art, history and culture all along: dark faces were simply left out of the picture.

So he didn’t just paint them back into our gaze, he painted them back into context. Titus’s art recreates historical artworks or events, and then dismantles, deconstructs and disfigures them to bring the black figures lost to the background and/or historical lies of omission into the light.

The best insight he gives on the content and shape of his work is in his opinion on the Confederate statue controversy: “We have this sort of binary conversation about keeping these sculptures up or taking them down. And I actually think that that binary conversation is problematic. I think there is another possibility that has to do with bringing in new work that speaks in conversation with this old work. It’s about a willingness to confront a very difficult past. There’s a third option.”

“Beyond the Myth of Benevolence,” 2014

One of his most famous pieces, “Beyond the Myth of Benevolence,” puts that theory into practice. It’s a depiction of his symbolic intention to draw back the veil on the untold and intertwined stories of black and American history. Kaphar’s painting is actually two – the top canvas, a portrait of Thomas Jefferson, hangs from a corner of the frame, just barely obscuring a portrait of an enslaved black woman that’s fully secured on all four sides. The woman is not supposed to be Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s actual kept woman, but a symbol of all the black women of the past shrouded behind glorified whitewashing. The paintings engage in such a manner that neither has the same impact without the other. Which is, of course, precisely the point.

“I’m not in the business of trying to demonize our Founding Fathers. I don’t really think there’s any benefit to that. But I’m also not trying to deify them. [I’m] pulling back the curtain on these ideas, these illusions, these stories that we tell ourselves,” he explains.

And it’s a concept that’s resonated. In 2014, Titus was commissioned by TIME Magazine to create his piece “Yet Another Fight for Remembrance” in response to the Ferguson Protests. His art has appeared in prestigious galleries like the Yale University Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and even in an installation at Princeton University where they’ve begun to acknowledge that many of their founders and leaders were also slave owners. In recognition of the historical significance and modern cultural relevance of his work, Titus was honored with the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Grant” just last year.

“Impressions of Liberty,” 2017. Read more about the installation on Princeton’s campus here.
“Self-Evidence,” 2011

Though he recognizes that his art can be polarizing, he maintains that it’s not fueling a public controversy that’s his intention, especially since his art predates the current conversation, but conveying another layer of emotion and complexity that’s been left off-the-record. “I make paintings that people perceive often as being very social or political. But for the most part they are all very personal. Everything stems from my relationship to a situation, to a narrative, to a story.” And he uses that relationship to illustrate a truth that “all depictions are fiction” because the reality of the human condition is usually much more complicated than any artist can convey. “I think one of our challenges is that we sort of consistently try to make [art] in a way that it’s a sentence with a period at the end. And inevitably it’s not — it’s a comma, and there should be a clause after that.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Browse Titus Kaphar’s incredible and historical portfolio of paintings, sculptures and installations.

Titus explains the concepts throughout his body of work in a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” feature.

Watch Titus take white paint to a “replica of a 17th-century Frans Hals painting, obscuring parts of the composition and bringing its hidden story into view. There’s a narrative coded in art like this, Kaphar says. What happens when we shift our focus and confront unspoken truths?”
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 17 — Dr. Patricia Bath

Dr. Patricia Bath - Ophthalmology Visionary

Early on, it was evident that Patricia Bath had a special insight.

By the time she was in high school, she’d outpaced her fellow students so quickly that she graduated within two years. Having heard about Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s work treating lepers in Africa, she knew that she too had work to do.

And she set to it without delay. When she won a scholarship to attend a 1959 National Science Foundation (NSF) cancer research summer workshop, the 16-year-old made a key observation that led her to develop an equation predicting cancer growth rates. So impressed were the head researchers that part of her work was included in their final research white paper.

As was her habit, Patricia breezed through studies at Hunter College and Howard University, enriching her traditional studies with travel every opportunity she could. But it was Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, the same year she came back home to Harlem to attend Columbia University in the City of New York, that truly opened her eyes to a problem that had been right in front of her the whole time.

Troubled by the work that Dr. King’s untimely death had left undone, and inspired by his Poor People’s Campaign that advocated the idea that all Americans should have what they need to live, she started working double duty between an ophthalmology fellowship at Columbia University, and an internship at the Harlem Hospital, where she was the only ophthalmology specialist on site. That was where she noticed a stunning disparity. A great deal of the work she did at Columbia was in preventative and minor emergency treatment, but almost all of her patients in Harlem had severe cataracts and/or were nearly blind.

Naturally, she began a study. And that study concluded that black patients were almost twice as likely to suffer from blindness as the general population, and eight times as likely to develop glaucoma than white patients. And the cause? Lack of access in both proximity and in financial means were the major factor in the very preventable eye disease Patricia observed in poorer populations of all races. She developed a program in conjunction with the doctors at Columbia to operate on Harlem’s blind patients, volunteered her time as a surgical assistant and as a result, performed the Harlem Hospital’s first major eye surgery in 1970.

That same year, she became the first black woman in residence for New York University’s ophthalmology department. Patricia used her platform to create the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness with the founding principle that all humans had the right to eyesight. Her expertise and her compassionate care had become a calling card that was in high demand.

So in 1974 when UCLA did indeed call with an offer to make her the first female faculty member in their Department of Ophthalmology, she took it. But when she arrived, she immediately had to set things straight. The office they’d reserved for her was in the basement with the lab animals. “I didn’t say it was racist or sexist. I said it was inappropriate and succeeded in getting acceptable office space. I decided I was just going to do my work,” she remarked. And by 1983, she’d co-founded and chaired UCLA’s Ophthalmology Residency Program, becoming the first woman in the country to hold such a position.

But she hadn’t forgotten her original purpose. During these years, Patricia implemented another program to intercede on behalf of the less fortunate, but with more experience in the medical system under her belt, this time, she took things global. Over the course of the late 70s and early 80s, Patricia Bath spearheaded a new medical discipline she dubbed Community Ophthalmology. Combining public health, community medicine and ophthalmology methodologies, her program galvanized volunteers and doctors in communities worldwide to identify patients in need of treatment where they were – at home, schools, or local clinics – and provide visual treatment from glasses to major surgery at low to no cost to the patient. Today, it’s an international practice utilized by the World Health Organization and non-governmental organizations like Doctors Without Borders which developed their programs based on her model.

Dr. Patricia Bath today. Breaker of Glass Ceilings, Restorer of Eyesight.

Despite her success, Dr. Bath recognized that one thing that was entirely out of her control interfered with her ability to do her best work: the glass ceiling established by racism and sexism. And like so many other black creators before her, she left for Europe where racial and gender equality were light years ahead and new technologies were available for her research. Because most laser development in the U.S. was reserved for military purposes, when Patricia arrived in Berlin, she was able to continue developing a treatment that she’d begun in California back in 1981, but been unable to finish without the tools.

By 1988, Dr. Patricia Bath’s Laserphaco Probe was finally patented, making her the first black woman in the United States with a medical patent. (She currently has 4 others in the US, among others in Japan, Canada and Europe.) The device utilizes lasers to dissolve cataracts, remove debris, irrigate the eye and prepare it for the insertion of a new lens. The machine revolutionized eye surgeries, making them cheaper and faster so that millions more patients could be treated worldwide, and has been successful in restoring sight to those who’ve been blind for as many as 30 years.

Though she retired from official practice and her esteemed role at UCLA in 1993, Dr. Bath is still using technology to drive her work. She’s held positions at Howard University and worldwide focusing on telemedicine to help patients in even the most remote parts of the globe get the care they need. She’s been recognized, awarded and honored more times and by more organizations that I can share with you here, but there’s one thing that she points to as her reason for a lifetime dedicated to her work: “The ability to restore sight is the ultimate reward.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

View the full scope of Dr. Bath’s work at her website.

Dr. Bath regularly appeared in the New York Times, ultimately including her 2019 obituary.

Dr. Bath’s 2022 induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame is well-earned. Read up on her achievements, or just skim the 10 Things You Need to Know About Patricia Bath.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 14 — Dr. Heber Brown

Rev. Dr. Heber Brown - Securing Soul Food for the People

Every Sunday, Reverend Dr. Heber Brown III delivered sermons about daily bread, nourishing one’s soul, and the fruits of the Spirit with conviction.

But all the preaching and praying one man could do couldn’t change one simple fact: his congregation’s tangible food was killing them.

The Pleasant Hope Baptist Church is located in North Baltimore, where 34% of black residents live in “healthy food priority zones” (once referred to as “food deserts”), communities where access to fresh food is nearly nonexistent while convenience stores and fast food thrive. What little fresh food Reverend Brown’s congregation did have available to them was too expensive for most on limited incomes. It was a problem universities, social anthropologists and every level of government had been researching for decades, yielding very few actual results. His congregants suffering from diet-related diseases couldn’t afford to keep waiting while the diabetes and heart disease that disproportionately affects black people caught up to them.

“I had what some would call a divine discontent,” which led Reverend Brown to a simple, but novel solution in 2015 that’s grown into the The Black Church Food Security Network today.

To start, he began sowing real seeds in a 1,500 square-foot garden he cleared on the church’s property. That garden now yields half a ton of produce per year, all of which is given freely at Pleasant Hope. But that was only halfway to the self-sufficiency Reverend Brown felt was so desperately missing from the equation.

So he took it a step further by sourcing local black farmers to run pop-up markets in the church lot after every Sunday’s service. The local farmers could guarantee profitability, and the local citizens could guarantee that the produce they needed to build healthier diets would be available regularly, affordably and that their money would go right back into sustaining their own.

Soon enough, the pews were full, the congregants were happier and healthier, and churches of all ethnicities came calling to find out how to do the same. Today, the Black Church Food Security Network serves 14 different congregations in Baltimore, and many more in Washington D.C., North Carolina, and Virginia as well.

As his organization has grown, so has Reverend Brown’s faith in his cause. “Food is always going to be a priority for our communities. And churches and faith-based organizations, I got a strong hunch, will always be here,” he said. That’s why it’s crucial that the black churches with economically disadvantaged congregations relying on them can provide. Where he once led, he now teaches, consulting with churches nationally to provide them with the skills they need to do the same work he’s done in Baltimore, and spreading the gospel of good food all along the way.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Read more about The Black Church Food Security Network‘s mission and donate or invest in their future.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 12 — Malika Whitley

Malika Whitley - Happier Through the Power of Song

Her voice was the only thing in the world Malika Whitley had.

It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d had so much more. Straight A’s. A family. A home.

The quiet time was the worst. That was when the memories of those all things came flooding back, including the memory of how she’d ended up where she was in the first place. After a slow spiral into schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Malika’s mother was jeopardizing her daughter’s safety. And with no resources, no one to trust and nowhere to go, Malika had ended up on the street, alone, trafficked and invisible.

But on Wednesdays, she could escape all of that. Slipping into a dark church basement through the side door, she found that one thing stopped all of those thoughts and gave her hope, security and control again: singing.

It was Wednesday nights that got her through her circumstances, kept her working, going to school and ultimately graduating college with degrees in international communications, cultural relations, and social economics. But she recognized that her success was unique. Thousands of kids worldwide and even right down the block from her never climbed their way out of the darkness she escaped.

During a 2010 music internship in Cape Town, South Africa, it clicked for her. She passed homeless children, who despite their situation – or because of it – sang and danced joyfully in the street. So she started a program connecting them to professionals at recording company she worked for. When her post-grad work found her in Hyderabad, India where children gathered around her to show off their creations and vie for a sale, she knew that the program she created in South Africa could have meaning here too.

So when she finally returned to the States in 2012, she set to work on building an actual program to give homeless kids the same thing she found in singing, and that she saw in the children in South Africa and Hyderabad. Since that fateful decision, her organization ChopArt (pronounced “shahp,” Cape Town slang for hello, goodbye, cool, congratulations) has given 60,000 homeless kids & teens art outreach programs, summer art camps, and year-round events to attend. But even more, ChopArt has given those children trusted circles of friends, something to look forward to each day, and a purpose to pursue. In fact, some of those kids have gone on to pursue careers in the arts with the skills they’ve developed under ChopArt’s guidance.

It’s grown from a small donation-based operation to a global non-profit bolstered by funding from socially minded corporations like Mailchimp along with thousands in competitive, merit-based, and international government grants. Today, ChopArt serves Atlanta, New Orleans, Hyderabad and Accra, Ghana to combat the effects of homelessness, sex trafficking, suicide and drug abuse on one of our most vulnerable communities. Malika’s work has been instrumental in bringing greater awareness to the 1.3 million school-aged homeless children in America alone.

And to her surprise, in her work, Malika’s found an even greater voice. “I would never be able to talk about my experience if those kids hadn’t had so much courage and trust in me,” she said. And without Malika, thousands of homeless children with stories like hers wouldn’t have had the opportunity ChopArt’s given them to change their lives through the power of creativity.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Support the work that ChopArt’s doing all over the world in “providing dignity, community, and opportunity to middle and high school aged youth experiencing homelessness through multidisciplinary arts immersion and mentorship.”

Watch Malika’s TED Talk detailing how she came to be founder & CEO of an organization helping homeless kids differently
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 9 — Marley Dias

Marley Dias - Black Girl Bookworm

Marley Dias was living a little black girl’s version of “Groundhog Day.”

She was a voracious reader, but she was also getting her fill of the same story over and over again.

White boy and dog teach words. White boy and dog go on adventures. White boy and dog avert disaster. White boy and dog come of age together.

It had become a predictable set up. What Marley wasn’t expecting was that a complaint to her mother about the predicament would be turned back on her in the form of a question: If you’re so bothered by it, what are you going to do about it?

And indeed, something needed to be done. Of the 3,500 children’s books written in 2017 and made available to public schools & libraries from U.S. publishers, only 319 featured black main characters and only 116 were by black American authors.

For a 10-year-old girl, Marley approached her choice thoughtfully:

“Option 1: focus on me, get myself more books; have my dad take me to Barnes and Noble and just be done, live my perfect life in suburban New Jersey.

Option 2: find some authors, beg them to write more black girl books so I’d have some of my own, special editions, treat myself a bit,” she quipped.

“Or… Option 3: start a campaign that collects books with black girls as the main characters, donate them to communities, develop a resource guide to find those books, talk to educators and legislators about how to increase the pipeline of diverse books, and lastly, write my own book, so that I can see black girl books collected and I can see my story reflected in the books I have to read.”

It goes without saying which one Marley chose.

Her #1000BlackGirlBooks movement started in 2015 as a drive to collect and distribute 1,000 books featuring black girls and women to underprivileged girls at a handful of schools. By early 2018, Marley had collected and distributed over 11,000 books worldwide. That same year, for her 13th birthday, she added one more book to the list: her own.

The book Marley Dias Gets It Done And So Can You! was written to empower girls who want to formulate their own plans “for social change, motivate people, and give strategies for the ones who need to stand up and do something and speak out—because I can guarantee [they]’re not the only person who feels that way.”

And she shows no signs of stopping there. She’s recently become ELLE.com’s youngest Editor-in-Residence, using her platform to interview writers/creators of color and share their stories with the girls who need to read them. She’s been recognized on the 2018 Forbes Under 30 list and honored with the Smithsonian Magazine 2017 American Ingenuity Award as well. And of course, she’s steadily amassed more books along the way. Marley plans to collect and distribute 1 million black girl books globally, and has created a searchable “Black Girl Book Guide” along with a companion app she’s currently developing to make it easier for EVERYONE to explore “a world where modern black girls are the main characters — not invisible, not just the sidekick. A world where black girls are free to be complicated, honest, human; to have adventures and emotions unique just to them. A world where black girls’ stories matter.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Follow along with Marley’s story at her website.

Don’t miss Marley’s #1000BlackGirlBooks database & donation site!

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 8 — Frederick Joseph

Frederick Joseph - Superhero in Disguise

Frederick was 8. And he was never dressing as Batman again.

“You’re black. You can’t be black and be a superhero.”

It was a blip in the life of Frederick Joseph, who went on to get an MBA from NYU, and become a successful entrepreneur, marketing professional, and the list goes on. He even founded We Have Stories, a non-profit designed to support underrepresented and marginalized storytellers and content creators.

But like pebbles at a windowpane, tiny reminders of the moment a classmate told him he couldn’t be the Dark Knight kept popping up along the way in the controversies over modern day depictions of James Bond, Hermione Granger, District 11’s Rue… Like Batman, they were not supposed to be black, because black people aren’t heroes.

That is, until one more reminder changed everything.

Marvel’s “Black Panther” didn’t just feature ONE black superhero. It was entirely cast by black superheroes. Black men who were kings; black women who were smart, sexy, and strong; black elders with the knowledge of countless generations; and all living in a place where blackness was not only accepted, but richly celebrated.

How little Frederick might have seen the world if this had been his childhood experience, instead of one where even masks couldn’t hide that the heroes didn’t look like him.

And thus the #BlackPantherChallenge was begun. His initial goal was a humble one: just $10,000 to buy tickets for the The Boys & Girls Club of Harlem. It became one of the most widely participated in GoFundMe campaigns ever, raising nearly $1 million with the help of local communities, celebrities and donors from 50 countries worldwide. Thanks to Frederick’s work, 73,000 children of color were able to see “Black Panther” in theaters last year.

Despite the massive success of the movie, which media outlets like Variety even credited in part to small grassroots efforts like Frederick’s, he recognizes that it’s just one drop in an infinite bucket of exclusion. The task isn’t done because “all children deserve to believe they can save the world, go on exciting adventures, or accomplish the impossible.” So he’s answering the call again with the #CaptainMarvelChallenge.

As Marvel Studios’ first feature film with a female lead and one that introduces more women of color to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he wants to ensure that the at-risk girls served by Girls Inc. of Greater Los Angeles can attend the premiere on International Women’s Day, and help them reach their goal of serving 2,000 more girls by 2020. “Captain Marvel” star Brie Larson has even signed on, as has GoFundMe, offering to donate $100 to the first 25 local #CaptainMarvelChallenge campaigns.

The bar set by the #BlackPantherChallenge is high, but Frederick hopes to make history again. No matter the outcome, thousands of boys & girls worldwide will be forever changed by a kid who just wanted to be Batman.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Accept & share the #CaptainMarvelChallenge!

Read Frederick’s own words about why supporting movies like “Black Panther” and “Captain Marvel” is so important to him.

Revisit the impact Frederick made with his #BlackPantherChallenge!
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 5 — Joy Buolamwini

Joy Buolamwini - The Face of AI Diversity
Joy Buolamwini, a Black woman coding for facial recognition the only way she can.

“My robot couldn’t see me unless I wore a white mask.”

The hours that Joy Buolamwini had spent writing, testing, and coding her “Aspire Mirror” were countless, and her creation had betrayed her. It wasn’t just that it didn’t work. It was that this supposedly neutral machine reinforced a social subtext black women encounter all too often: YOU ARE INVISIBLE.

Her program was supposed to utilize facial recognition software to replace a user’s face with that of an animal that inspires them. The problem she identified was simple. Why it mattered and what to do about it were not. Because there was a lack of diversity in tech, there was a lack of diversity in digital tools.

Joy pushed through her projects substituting her own face for her mask and that of a white roommate before moving on to other PhD research for the MIT Media Lab. But when she attended an artificial intelligence demo years later in Hong Kong, and ran into the same problem, she realized that it was one with far-reaching consequences.

Right now, 16 states allow the FBI to access DMV photos with facial recognition technology in what Georgetown Law refers to as “The Perpetual Lineup.” Joy’s research found that while facial recognition almost always correctly identified a white man’s race and gender (94% at worst), as skin tones got darker, recognition of race and gender became less accurate, with black women being the least identifiable at only 64%.

What happens if the same faulty code misidentifies people of color already facing bias in our justice and immigration systems? How much identification and accessibility software is rendered null & void for anyone without “normal” face specifications? Who is establishing standards for these technologies that might not only be using flawed historical data or personal biases to code, but reinforcing those biases with their outputs? These weren’t just hypothetical questions.

2 years ago, when Microsoft launched an artificial intelligence on Twitter designed to learn from users, then generate its own tweets, it was pulled within 16 hours because what it had learned was racism & sexism. Even Google Images was caught under fire in 2015 when the algorithm they used to “learn” from aggregated searches tagged photographs of black people as gorillas. The next year, an Asian man’s New Zealand passport application photo was rejected because biased facial recognition incorrectly determined his eyes were closed.

Joy, mask off.

So Joy stepped up. She presented her “Gender Shades” research to the major facial recognition software developers Microsoft, IBM, and Chinese company Face++. Only the IBM Watson team responded, validating Joy’s research and integrating it into tests of their newest facial recognition technology.

But she didn’t stop there. Joy’s since created the Algorithmic Justice League, allying major innovators and organizations in artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology under a code of ethics to ensure fairness, accessibility, transparency, and accountability in an increasingly digital age.

“Can machines ever see my queens as I view them? / Can machines ever see our grandmothers as we knew them?” she pleads. And no one is working harder to answer those questions with a resounding yes so that we ALL have a place in the future.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Visit the Algorithmic Justice League to see how they’re fighting what Joy calls “The Coded Gaze,” read about her Gender Shades facial recognition experiments, and find out more about the Safe Face Pledge she’s using to hold digital innovators accountable.

Find out more about the Georgetown Law Perpetual Lineup & how vulnerable images of your face might be to potential local & federal misuse.

Joy refers to herself as a “poet of code,” but she performs a bit of spoken word too. Listen to the piece my closing quote is from “AI, Ain’t I A Woman?”, and see some pretty wild AI misidentifications of some famous black women.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 3 — Virgil Abloh

Virgil Abloh - LV VIP

Virgil Abloh grew up a middle-class, private-schooled skater kid, graduated college with a B.S. in civil engineering and a Master’s in architecture, and then switched gears to become an intern at Italian luxury giant Fendi.

But he still couldn’t get into a fashion show.

Virgil had been turned away at the door of fashion’s biggest brands often enough that he’d even perfected his strategy of circling the block to try again later. “We got into about 60 percent of those shows. Even when I just walked into a luxury store, people would look at me like I didn’t belong there,” he recounts.

But accustomed to not fitting in, Virgil plunged ahead. When he was hired as creative director of Kanye West’s creative agency, his art direction for “Watch the Throne” earned him a 2011 Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package. Such a major creative success gave him the confidence for solo experiments in fashion, which he began with $40 of Ralph Lauren deadstock that he screen-printed with his own designs and resold for over $550 a piece until he was hungry for something more.

Virgil collaborated with Nike to design Serena Williams’ striking and celebrated 2018 U.S. Open tennis dress.

And so, in 2013, his original brand Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh, the world’s first luxury label designed and owned by a black American, was born. The very next year, Off-White debuted at Paris Fashion Week, and has since become a global phenomenon with 10 standalone stores on 4 continents, and beat out the likes of Prada, Gucci, Balenciaga, and Versace to top the list of 2018’s hottest luxury brands. Virgil’s collaborations have included home goods for IKEA, kicks for Converse, museum exhibitions with famed Japanese artist Takashi Murakami…

…and that was all BEFORE he was tapped to become the first black person to ever serve as menswear artistic director of Louis Vuitton. He’s not only the first in LV’s 165-year history, but the third in leadership at ANY French heritage fashion house.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t know that I could be showing in Paris, because I didn’t see anyone doing that who looked like me. Now we are the establishment. I’m legitimately like, ‘Who can we empower next?’” The access to fashion’s upper echelons that Virgil was initially denied is a now hallmark of his brand. His runways are often streamed on his Instagram, he has fashion “How To” videos on his brand website, and under his creative guidance, black faces that might once have been turned away from fashion shows are now the symbol of luxury.

Virgil at center, styling for his first LV runway show based on The Wizard of Oz.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Go behind the scenes at the installation & opening of Virgil’s 2018 exhibition with Takashi Murakami at the Gagosian Art Museum.

Take a virtual visit of Virgil’s 2019 “Figures of Speech” exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

His dynamic and innovative Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh runway art direction makes Virgil’s runways entirely unexpected & well worth the watch.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 27 — Joi McMillon & Bradford Young

Although one of the biggest Oscar stories ever happened on TV last night, a couple of much more monumental stories had played out a few weeks before when the nominations were announced.

On January 24, 2017, Joi McMillon became the first black woman nominated in the Best Film Editing category for “Moonlight.” It had been almost 50 years since a black person’s name had appeared in the category. At the same time, Bradford Young became the first black American nominated in the Best Cinematography category for “Arrival.”

The Academy Awards have been presented annually for nearly 88 years. (It was held twice in one year, hence last night being the 89th presentation.)

It’s a landmark for black people & women working behind the camera. Women were originally the ones tasked with editing film because it required laboriously cutting and piecing actual film, a task most believed to be too menial and too delicate for men’s hands. When editing equipment was introduced, women were phased out due to the now technical nature of the job. Black people never had particular access to White Hollywood, instead having to build their own film industries (see Day 9’s Oscar Micheaux).

To have received her honor on a film with such an intersectional & culturally diverse story as “Moonlight” is especially significant for Joi McMillon who said that “what acknowledgment and consideration bring to the film is validity. And I think the recognition by the Academy is telling them, ‘We hear your voice, and we’re paying attention to your voice, and we want you to continue to be heard.’”

For Bradford though, recognition for his work on “Arrival” is more bittersweet. His struggle reflects a complicated view that black America holds towards not just the Academy, but also toward the America we live in. What he says about it is just one reason that the stories we share during Black History Month serve a much greater purpose:

“The fact that I’m the first is only a reflection of [the Academy’s] failure to see us, which is our continuous struggle—just see me. If you just see me, you get to know me, then you’ll see that there have been many bodies, many spirits, many souls that should’ve been honored before.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Watch more on the Academy’s history (or lack thereof) of recognizing & including minorities.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 24 — Adm. Michelle Howard

Michelle Howard - First Female Four-Star Admiral

Michelle Howard just wanted to do her job. She was a black woman who’d excelled in the U.S. Navy for years, so naturally, all sorts of organizations wanted her to come share her stories, or to clink glasses with her at their parties.

In 1999, she’d become the first black woman to command a Navy ship, the USS Rushmore (LSD 47). And over the years, she’d also commanded tsunami rescue efforts, maritime security operations, and counter-piracy strikes. In fact, just three days into her counter-piracy command, she successfully led the well-documented rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates who’d hijacked & kidnapped him from the Maersk Alabama.

By then, she’d also won the Women of Color STEM Career Achievement Award, the USO Military Woman of the Year Award, the NAACP Chairman’s Award, and the Secretary of the Navy’s Captain Winifred Collins Award. She’d even started her career famously as one of the first women admitted to the United States Naval Academy.

Michelle didn’t get where she was by entertaining distractions. Back when she was little, she’d learned to stay focused after kids on the playground called her a n*gger and when she ran home crying, her father told her “You gotta toughen up. This is the country you live in.”

She wanted to shut out everything but the job when a few words from her mother changed her entire perspective: “You are where you are historically.”

So she embraced her place in history, and anything else that came along with it. Two years later, Michelle came to take it all.

Adm. Howard is pictured here with Rear Adm. Annie B. Andrews (L) and Rear Adm. Lillian E. Fishburne (C, ret.) as the first three black female admirals in the Navy.

On July 1, 2014, she became the first female four-star admiral, as well as the first black person and first woman to serve as Vice Chief of Naval Operations.

On June 7, 2016, she stepped down as Vice Chief of Naval Operations… to lead U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. Sixth Fleet, becoming the first female four-star admiral to command operational forces in the process. She also leads NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Naples – JFCNP in Italy. All that, and she’s only 56.

So when it comes to doing her job, as the highest ranking female in U.S. military history, I think it’s safe to say that she’s doing an all-around damn good one.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Adm. Howard discusses her experiences overcoming race & gender barriers with The Empowerment Project.