Artist Simone Leigh curated a series of intellectual sermons directed by Black women who grieved, strategized, loved, and yearned for community.
Global Black History
Editors: Marlene L. Daut, & Tao Leigh Goffe
Past Editors: Keisha N. Blain & Annette Joseph-Gabriel
When Panama Came to Brooklyn
“For those Afro-Caribbean Panamanian who had lived through Panama’s Canal Zone apartheid, Brooklyn segregation probably came as no surprise.”
The Dawn of Scientific Racism
In the 1740s, Bordeaux developed some of the first modern theories of racial difference, even as the city profited from the slave trade.
Until We Meet on the Dance Floor Again: A Playlist
Unkind Laughter
“Consider the laughter on October 15, 1982—after 1,000 people died from complications related to AIDS—at the Reagan White House press briefing.”
Black Space Beyond Nation
“When did everyone become Black and not of specific nations themselves? Why did being Black mean not belonging to a place?”
Mapping Race & Rightlessness Across Deep Time
“What would it mean to create a sanctuary for all?”
One More Embrace: Octavia’s Future/Present
Butler’s work helps us see how time is a spiral, how the present moment is always layered with multiple pasts and underlying alternate futures.
Octavia E. Butler: The Next 75 Years
Rather than politically utopian, Butler’s stories teach us about grief, consolation, hope, and—most of all—how to live in struggle.
“Keep Your Own Counsel”: Talking Octavia E. Butler with Lynell George
“She wanted people to be curious and take action in their lives. Not be sheep. To find the ways we can work together in crisis.”
The World Continues to Need Octavia E. Butler
Pandemics, racist violence, climate change, democratic collapse: it’s finally clear that it’s Butler’s world. We’re just living in it.
An Uncommon, Unconquerable Mind: Our Friend, Julius S. Scott III (1955–2021)
“Are there ways in which Black North Americans connected to places and things that were outside of the world we thought they were in?”
Cuba & the US: Necessary Mirrors
Exponentially more enslaved Africans were forced to the lands that now make up Latin America rather than the United States. Where is their story?
How to Live Among What Is Dead
“Octavia Butler teaches us,” explains Black playwright Ericka Dickerson-Despenza, “…that we have two options in Apocalypse: adapt or die.”
Thelma King and the Call for Revolution
In 1963, a Panamanian assemblywoman took to Cuban radio to condemn the United States and its control of the Americas.
Quilting: An Archive of Hand, Eye, and Soul
Once, Black women employed textile arts both as a mutual aid network, and as a safe space to envision a Southern Black liberated life.
Sembène’s “Black Girl” Is a Ghost Story
Few know the film—the first feature-length film by a West African director—was based on a real-life incident, a real tragedy lost in colonial archives.
Necessary Housework: Dismantling the Master’s House
White supremacy tells us we do not belong, but we do have a place in history.
“Tell Real Stories”: Shawn Utsey on Racism and Psychotherapy
“Liberation begins in the mind… Black folks have never been given the opportunity to define our own reality.”
Nikki Giovanni on Rest, Love, and Care
“There is nothing supreme about being white.”