Don’t Scroll Past These Black History Content Creators
From grade school to grad school, opportunities to learn about Black history are disappearing. Educators are losing their jobs for teaching Black history. And relevant books are vanishing from school libraries. But online content creators have stepped up to fill the void. And platforms like Instagram and TikTok give them the biggest classroom of all.
Some of the posters are university professors moving their work from lecterns and whiteboards to Facebook. Amateur historians from every generation are taking to Instagram with humorous, urgent or edgy storytelling. Researchers are bringing to light facts that debunk the history Americans have been taught for generations. Scientists on TikTok discuss the collective medical history of Black people in America. Videos include artist illustrations, original graphics, or art generated by artificial intelligence.
The result is a variety of infotainment options on Black history, life and culture. Have a look at the content creators we found.
Black History Unlocked
Black history comes to life here with rarely seen film footage and photos of celebrities and activists and other changemakers. There are also stories from history told with sepia-toned, illustrated slide shows, and animated reenactments, backed by voiceovers or music. Among the offerings are a slide show of Black women inventors; photos showing that Black soldiers originated the dap, that mix of gestures and poses young people use to acknowledge one another; and a historian explaining that Abraham Lincoln did not free enslaved people.
ashleytheebarroness
In her posts, Ashley B reveals and analyzes Black history from a personal perspective. Her face is in your face, filling the frame. Her tone is conversational but quietly commanding. Her wide, expressive eyes lend emotion to her stories. She has grouped her videos into several categories like the self-explanatory “History They Won’t Teach,” and “Government Lies Exposed.” Her most poignant series of posts is called “Say Their Name.” In that series Ashley talks about Black victims of injustice, like Viola Desmond and Sammy Younge, Jr. It’s also where she highlights lesser known Black changemakers Dr. Josephine English, Mittie Maud Lena Gordon and Austin Steward and Lucy Craft Laney.
In her posts, Ashley B reveals and analyzes Black history from a personal perspective. Her face is in your face, filling the frame. Her tone is conversational but quietly commanding. Her wide, expressive eyes lend emotion to her stories. She has grouped her videos into several categories like the self-explanatory “History They Won’t Teach,” and “Government Lies Exposed.” Her most poignant series of posts is called “Say Their Name.” In that series Ashley talks about Black victims of injustice, like Viola Desmond and Sammy Younge, Jr. It’s also where she highlights lesser known Black changemakers Dr. Josephine English, Mittie Maud Lena Gordon and Austin Steward and Lucy Craft Laney.
Blackhistory
With the simple name comes a simple premise: still images of the individuals, locations and artifacts marking Black people’s existence in America. In many rarely seen photos, scrollers can see celebrities both in and away from the spotlight. A trove of black and white photos provides a glimpse of ordinary, nearly unknown people living and working. Check out these beautifully framed photos, from around 1855, of a young girl and a firefighter; the 1789 ad offering enslaved teenager for sale the fighting pose of a very young Muhammad Ali; Rosa Parks’ lineage outlined in the pages of a Bible; and a bride with a big bouquet and flowing train standing with her groom in 1934.
Joel Bervell MD
Bervell is a physician, a popular speaker, and a health care activist. In most of his posts, he is a serious-looking Black man in glasses. The relaxed TV news style of his videos usually features Bervell against a backdrop showing a scientific study, an article or photo. He appears in other videos sharing his experiences as a medical professional. Bevell’s videos include an eye-opening multi-part series comparing the appearance of skin conditions on lighter and darker skintones; lesser-known stories of people like Dr. Cornelius Rhoads and Vertus Hardiman; and the difference in high blood pressure treatment for Black patients.
Histora
It claims a mission of remembering the historically forgotten. With sepia-toned illustrations, Histora highlights what gifted Black people endured as their accomplishments went unnoticed or undermined. Among their video stories: the post-Emancipation Black high school that outperformed others of its time; Educator Clara Belle Drisdale Williams, who spent her college years standing outside the all-white classrooms where she was enrolled; Benjamin Montgomery, one of many Black inventors whose enslaved status kept them from patenting their inventions; and the Statue of Liberty’s original design and its intended purpose of commemorating the end of slavery.
Sunn m'Cheaux
With his long locs flowing down his torso or bundled on top of his head, a social media critical thinker gives brief talks on the past and present of Black life in America. Jermaine Fowler is a Harvard linguistics lecturer and expert in creole dialects and often peppers his food for thought with patois and slang, discussing subjects like racism in interracial relationships; tonal characteristics; Black American speech; managing racist trolls online; the differences between gender and sexuality and finding meaning in life's little accidents.
Jermaine Fowler Image courtesy of Sunn m'Cheaux