Black folks are constantly moving the needle and shaping popular culture whether it’s through music, film, TV, or writing.
That deserves to not only be celebrated but preserved and protected. Art and activism go hand-in-hand, and as we quickly approach our 12-year anniversary we continue to expand the horizons of our liberation through art.
We commit to preserving and creating stories from our communities that uplift our collective imaginations and value our deepest experiences.
Black Lives Matter and Black Girls Rock! team up at the Black Excellence Brunch
The Black Excellence Brunch was a celebration of joy, culture, and commitment to our people. At this powerful gathering, BLM partnered with Black Girls Rock!, a global movement and nonprofit founded by Beverly Bond to honor and empower Black women and girls through education, mentorship, and creative expression.
For nearly two decades, Black Girls Rock! has inspired millions by challenging harmful narratives, showcasing Black brilliance, and equipping girls to lead confidently. Its programs — including Black Girls Lead, Girls Rock Tech, and the BGR! Film Fest — provides mentorship, leadership training, and creative platforms for young women to thrive.
BLM awarded a $50,000 grant to Black Girls Lead, affirming our shared vision that Black girls deserve not just to be seen and heard but to be celebrated and invested in. As Black Enterprise described the brunch, it was “a celebration of Black joy, community, and commitment to tackling Black issues” — and a moment to declare our belief in the next generation’s brilliance.
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners
This year we saw and celebrated Sinners. The importance of Sinners goes far beyond record-breaking earnings, and accolades.
Sinners is so much more than a vampire movie. We see Black love in all forms, between family, brothers, and community. We love to see a full-figured, dark-skinned Black woman as a romantic lead.
We see the evolution of music, the roots of blues, community, freedom, and Black struggle explored in unique and awe-inspiring ways.
Movies like this, art like this, directors and actors like this are what we get when we invest in Black creativity. This is what we get when we expand opportunity beyond only the most privileged.
Paradise on Hulu
Paradise delivers top-tier acting from an incredible cast, including standout performances from some of the best Black actors in the game. It’s also a story about the strings billionaires pull to keep themselves in power. Sound familiar?
Celebrating a TV show may seem frivolous at a moment when petty tyrants are trying to tear the United States apart at the seams, but that’s exactly when culture matters most.
Joy, and connecting over art are critical to getting through this moment and building a better future.
The Met Gala
We are the Met. The real one. No invite needed. No theme required. We’ve been the moment. This isn’t a costume. This is culture. And it doesn’t end after the Met Gala is over.
Black Dandyism, Black elegance, Black excellence. That’s today and every day. The Met Gala happens daily on our blocks, from Harlem to Havana, from ancestral thread to Afrofuturist vision. We tailor culture, interweaving joy and pain.
This moment isn’t reactionary, it’s rooted. “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” is a long-overdue acknowledgement of what we’ve always known: Black style isn’t just influence, it’s origin.
From 18th-century Black Dandies who dressed in defiance of slavery’s gaze, to today’s red-carpet royalty turning every step into a statement, we wear our power with purpose.
Black style doesn’t begin or end with a museum exhibit. It’s a mirror of our history and a runway toward our future.
Freedom Nation
Freedom Nation is a group of Black families with a vision to build a Black-owned and self-governed eco-village. Together, they are transforming over 200 acres of raw, untouched land in Georgia into a thriving, self-sustaining, and self-determined community.
This eco-village isn't a little house on the prairie, okay. It’s meeting today’s innovation with our ancestors' wisdom. This is a new path forward to freedom. Freedom Nation shows us that we can truly be free, we just have to carve our own space and way to it.
This year during Black Futures Month, we celebrated Octavia Butler.If you’re not familiar with the legendary Octavia Butler and her works, you are truly missing out.
Thankfully you have us to start your education in one of the mothers of science fiction and a badass Black author who changed the genre forever.
It’s impossible to ignore the parallels between Octavia Butler’s works and our reality. It almost feels like she could see into the future. Black authors whose genius withstands the test of time like hers NEED to be celebrated.
Our creativity is our inheritance and our weapon across the diaspora.
Together, we seek to honor revolutionaries like Octavia Butler by uplifting their works and by doing the work to prevent the dystopian futures she wrote about.
The Future of Food: At Home with Osayi Endolyn
Black Lives Matter collaborated with Osayi Endolyn, a James Beard Award-winning food and culture writer, for a four-part video series on exploring how food connects us to our past identities and envisions our collective future.
There is such a thing as Black food, we need to celebrate it. Black food is the definitive American cuisine.
Food and identity are deeply intertwined, and it’s critical to explore the ancestral history of what we’re eating and why, and where the dishes that define us, our family, and our community come from. Food gives us connection to those who helped shape us, and what the food that we share with our loved ones passes on this culture and history onward.
Thank you for continuing with us on our journey to celebrate all 6 of our pillars as we approach BLM Day. Each of these pillars is critical to our mission of Black liberation.
We know that this has been a hard year, but we also have made important strides and that’s worth taking a moment to spotlight.
Our grassroots movement is pushing for Black liberation every single day. We are striving to create a world where Black people do so much more than just survive. It’s time we thrive.
As an organization one of our biggest hurdles is consistency.
A recurring contribution of anything you can afford goes a long way as we plan for the months, years, and even decades ahead. This is the most effective way for small-dollar donors (like you) to power our Black liberation work.
Black Lives Matter imagines a world where Black people across the diaspora thrive, experience joy, and are not defined by their struggles.
In pursuing liberation, we envision a future fully divested from police, prisons, and all punishment paradigms and which invests in justice, joy, and culture. Email is the most important way we keep in touch with our supporters. But we know there's a lot going on.
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