11 Search results for "ghosts of history"

I imagine that I would be a historian, a social librarian of sorts, whenever Black liberation is realized, and I imagine that my role wouldn’t look much different from the work I am already doing: Helping to keep Black histories. For as long as I’ve been aware of my Blackness as a threat to whiteness […]

In the years between Victor Halerpin’s White Zombie (1932) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), Blackness in the horror genre has largely been a myriad of hidden slavery narratives featuring gendered anti-Black violence and racist dehumanization. Excepting the stories that include Black characters as tokens or magical negroes who ensure the survival of white characters—usually […]

The following post was published in the New York Times. It was written by Peter Baker and Matt Apuzzo.  By:  Peter Baker and Matt Apuzzo The two men in open-collar shirts sat facing each other, papers and a BlackBerry strewn on a coffee table, sober looks on both their faces. One leaned forward, gesturing with his […]

by Janyce Glasper Hannah Bledsoe loved Linda Crawford. Yet Hannah desperately needed a quiet, isolated place to paint alone. One simply could not crash on a college friend’s couch forever. She found salvation in the good neighborhood— a drafty basement converted into a studio apartment. The tightly jarred windows and cracked ceilings poorly congealed together […]

by Donnie Moreland  “We hummed a celebration for living. For fighting. For refusing to die. For enduring when giving up would be easier. For believing, against all odds, that we’d get home someday.”  —The Coming; Daniel Black “It’s nothing like losing one’s keys. It’s not as if he has been misplaced. It’s not as simple […]

Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Black Liberation & Organizing, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. How do we hold politicians accountable to Black communities? Is that even possible? What should be our role in the electoral politics? What does abolition look like in practice? What […]

Editor’s Note: This essay contains spoilers of season 1 of Haunting of Hill House and discussion of suicide I don’t remember how my parents died in the nightmare, but I woke up screaming bloody murder. I had to have been about 4-years-old. I don’t think I had considered being indefinitely away from my parents before, […]

by Andrew Keahey There are a lot of slasher movies to choose from. After the release of Halloween in 1987, horror was never really the same. The masked murderer picking off unwitting teenagers and twenty-somethings ended up becoming a cultural staple. People that don’t even watch horror movies know what names to say when they […]

*Editor’s Note: March is National Disabilities Month and our themes at Black Youth Project are Ableism & Physical and Mental Health. We are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. Content Warning: rape, mental health* “… mad methodology resists rote positivism and defies the cult of objectivity; it listens for […]

By L.G. Parker For black and queer persons alike, much of the realities of our lives are considered “made up” by those who don’t and won’t understand us. Black, queer poets have access to new ways of approaching language as a result of this reality. As self proclaimed black lesbian warrior poet Audre Lorde said […]

A re-imagining of Carl Samburg’s classic piece “Chicago,” Kevin Coval examines the media’s handling of Chief Keef and the horrific violence plaguing the Windy City with his new poem “Chicago (KEEF).” Listening to a recording, and read the full text at BlackYouthProject.com!