Black Youth Project

03/24/2026

What Gets Carried: On Silence, Power, and Survival by Amber Butts.

In this reflection, Amber Butts explores how Black and Brown women are often asked to carry harm in silence to protect movements and power. What is framed as “the work” becomes a way to defer truth and accountability.

Through Dolores Huerta’s story, the piece highlights how survivors endure harm for the sake of collective progress, while systems remain unchanged.

The essay asks what it means to build movements where truth can be spoken—and held.

🔗 Read the full story at BLACKYOUTHPROJECT.COM.

03/20/2026

Print Never Left: Black Writers on Archiving and Self-Published Print Media by .

In this reflection, Dr. Ravynn Stringfield reminds us that for Black artists, writers, and activists, print media never disappeared. From Harlem Renaissance publications like FIRE!! to zines, comics, and independent presses today, Black creators have long built their own spaces to publish, archive, and share knowledge when mainstream platforms fall short.

These traditions of self-publishing and memory keeping are acts of community building and resistance, preserving the stories, ideas, and everyday histories that shape Black life.

The essay invites us to think about archiving not just as institutional work, but as a collective responsibility to record how we lived, organized, and cared for one another.

🔗 Read the full story at BLACKYOUTHPROJECT.COM.

03/17/2026

Erotic Communion: Black Women’s Pleasure in Sinners by Juahl Ganaway.

In this reflection, Juahl Ganaway explores how Sinners centers Black women’s pleasure as sacred, powerful, and deeply rooted in cultural and spiritual traditions. Through the character Pearline, the film connects sensuality, music, and ritual in ways that echo the histories of the blues and hoodoo in Black Southern life.

While audiences celebrate the freedom and power in Sammie’s music, Pearline’s expression of desire is often reduced to harmful stereotypes like the “Jezebel.” Ganaway argues that this reaction reveals how Black women’s pleasure is still misunderstood and policed.

Drawing on the work of Audre Lorde and Angela Davis, the essay reminds us that erotic power has long been a site of autonomy, survival, and freedom within Black cultural traditions.
🔗 Read the full story at BLACKYOUTHPROJECT.COM (link in bio).

03/12/2026

We Were Taught to Be Useful Before We Were Allowed to Be Human by .

In a powerful reflection, DeLisha Tapscott explores how many Black girls are taught early that their value lies in being helpful, responsible, and emotionally aware of others. What begins as care and survival becomes expectation, shaping how Black women move through institutions, workplaces, and community spaces.

“To be useful was to be relied upon. To be relied upon was to be expected. And to be expected was to be loved.”

The essay invites us to question what it means to inherit usefulness as identity and asks what becomes possible when Black women are allowed to be human first.

🔗 Read the full story at BLACKYOUTHPROJECT.COM (link in bio).

03/01/2026

In the Wake of “The Trayvon Generation,” reflects on the moment that reshaped a generation, the killing of Trayvon Martin, and the collective grief, rage, and political awakening that followed.

Through personal memory and sharp cultural analysis, the essay traces how Black communities carried the weight of loss while transforming pain into movement, scholarship, and collective action. It asks us to remember not only what was taken, but what emerged: a generation determined to fight for the right to live fully and safely.

🔗 Read the full story at BLACKYOUTHPROJECT.COM (link in bio).

02/27/2026

🚨 Black Youth Project Relaunches Its Digital Magazine!

A renewed home for Black feminist, abolitionist storytelling — built to protect community memory, sustain truth-telling, and expand the archive. As Black media spaces continue to shrink, BYP returns as a platform rooted in accountability, culture, and the voices of Black youth shaping the future.

🔗 Read the full story at BLACKYOUTHPROJECT.COM (link in bio).

02/26/2026

🚨 WE’RE HIRING!

The Black Youth Project is looking for a Social Media Assistant to join our team of Black writers, artists, and creators dedicated to telling comprehensive stories about Black life.

Responsibilities include:
1️⃣ Manage IG, Threads, and other online accounts
2️⃣ Publicize new content
3️⃣ Create and distribute newsletters
4️⃣ Build community engagement

💼 Paid position: $25/hour
⏰ 10–15 hours per week

📩 Interested? Email your resume + letter of interest to: info@blackyouthproject.com

02/01/2026

100 Years of Black History. 100 Years of Our Stories.

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson began what would become Black History Month—starting as Negro History Week and growing into a lasting tradition of learning, memory, and connection.
Over the past century, Black history has unfolded in layers. It has been shaped by creativity and courage, by organizing and imagination, by moments of joy and moments of reckoning. Each generation has carried forward what came before, adding its own voice to a story that continues to grow.

In the 1920s and ’30s, the Harlem Renaissance affirmed Black cultural and intellectual power through voices like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. In the 1940s and ’50s, leaders such as Rosa Parks and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People challenged segregation and laid the groundwork for change. The 1960s brought mass movements led by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, forcing the nation to confront injustice.

In the decades that followed, Black communities continued to shape culture and consciousness. The ’70s and ’80s expanded creative power through voices like Grandmaster Flash. The 1990s renewed national attention after the beating of Rodney King. The 2000s marked a historic political moment with the election of Barack Obama. More recently, movements like Black Lives Matter have carried calls for justice across communities and continents.

Across every era, Black History Month has created space to pause and reflect—to connect family stories with public history, personal memory with collective record, and past struggles with present hopes.

One hundred years in, the story is still unfolding. Still being written by artists, organizers, educators, families, and communities. Still reminding us that history is not something behind us, but something we live every day.

06/28/2024

The Black Life Everywhere Team welcomes Devin Barrington-Ward and Penelope French as our local co-editors for our BLE: ATLANTA, our second edition in our local digital magazine series.

DEVIN BARRINGTON-WARD () is the Founder and Managing Director of Black Futurist Group (BFG), an Atlanta based social justice innovation firm using public policy, community organizing, media engagement, and political education as tools to build reimagined, equitable, and liberated Black futures in our lifetime. BFG does this work out of a belief that Black life is valuable, precious, and worth protecting. BFG works with those standing at the intersections of varying cultural, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities across various communities to build, preserve, improve, and advance reimagined Black futures.

PENELOPE FRENCH () is the Executive Director of Neighbor, a local Atlanta Healing Justice Organization that has chosen a pathway to liberation through art, organizing, restorative training programs, and spiritual activism. Neighbor is rooted in the spiritual/conscious liberation of Black people across the diaspora as a pathway to dismantling harmful government systems. Penelope is inspired to create healing systems that are life giving to black people and those who have been oppressed using an abolitionist framework.

Keep an eye out for more exciting content coming your way soon & the announcement of our BLE ATLANTA cohort!

09/21/2023

Yay!!!!

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08/22/2023