Young Black Activists

NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson made an announcement this month that Black athletes should refuse to attend predominantly white colleges and universities in Florida,

The fight for change continues.

JD Barnes is a renowned fashion photographer whose work has been featured in outlets like Essence and Harper’s Bazaar (and spotlighted in Cassius' Young Icons feature). But in the spring and summer of 2020, with the rising unrest spawned by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, he trained his lens on Black Lives Matter protests throughout the nation.

Like most students nearing graduation, there’s a particular excitement that arises when you think about finally being done with the rigor of higher education. That excitement was evident in Martese Johnson’s (he/him) voice when he spoke of his upcoming graduation from the University of Michigan Law School this year. 

Protests are not new to Washington, DC and are happening all the time, says Dee Dwyer—a photojournalist born and raised on the southeast side of the nation’s capital. But there was something different about the protests that swept the city during the summer of 2020. The world was on fire. We were living through a […]

Born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama, Barnes’s passion for documenting stories began with him being the subject in front of the camera instead of behind it.

The Black trans community was mourning Islan Nettles, the 21-year-old Black trans woman who was brutally beaten by a man on a street in Harlem. In response to Islan’s death, grassroots organizer Milan Nicole Sherry (she/her), created #BlackTransLivesMatter to mobilize people around the violent murders of Black trans women that often go under-reported.

It is in the legacy of Black power building that the youth answer the call to agitate toward a safer, more just future. Taji Chesimet (he/him/his), 19-year-old co-founder and Executive Director of Raising Justice, embodies that principle and is organizing his community to answer the call.

We watched millions rendered helpless under a pandemic that ravaged Black, brown and under-resourced communities. But If you ask Wisdom Cole (he/him), national campaign and training manager for the NAACP Youth and College Division, the most poignant thing he witnessed last year, I’m sure his answer would include something about the power young Black people have to change this world.

During the summer of 2020, during a global pandemic and after the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, protestors throughout the United States (and the world) took to the streets to demand the end to police and white vigilante violence against Black people. These moments radicalized Los Angeles based documentary photographer Rob Liggins to grab his camera and join protestors, hoping to tell a more authentic and more inspiring story about the Black Lives Matter Movement than he was seeing in the news.

“A lot of times people forget activists and organizers are human beings and we have lives,” said Kiazolu.

After the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota spurred protests in New York City and across the world, photographer Mark Clennon grabbed his camera—determined to document the Black Lives Matter protests happening in Manhattan.