February 20, 2025
Black creativity has all the time been a drive of resistance
Written by Michele Y. Smith
Black creativity has all the time been a drive of resistance, a lens for liberation, and a device for imagining new prospects. From Octavia Butler’s prescient novels to Janelle Monáe’s Soiled Laptop, Black storytelling continues to mirror and form the world round us. Because the CEO of the Museum of Pop Tradition (MOPOP), I’ve seen how these narratives permit us to check futures the place Black storytelling facilities into realms of pleasure, resilience, and boundless creativity.
Just lately, a robust motion emerged that underscores the energy of Black storytelling in remodeling challenges into alternatives. Professors and educators have taken to TikTok, creating what’s now being referred to as “HillmanTok College.” Impressed by the fictional HBCU from the TV present, A Completely different World, HillmanTok is a decentralized, community-driven digital campus the place classes on civil rights, entrepreneurship, life abilities, and content material creation are shared with audiences around the globe.
This grassroots initiative is greater than a intelligent use of expertise in a time when entry to training, significantly for marginalized communities, stays fraught with obstacles, HillmanTok represents a reimagining of training itself. It transforms a web-based platform into an area the place the Black neighborhood can train, study, and create collectively. It’s not simply in regards to the classes shared — it’s about affirming the significance of Black data and the energy of shared studying.
This spirit of collective storytelling and reimagining is what we’re celebrating at Black Past, MOPOP’s newest exploration of Black speculative fiction and Afrofuturism. With displays that includes iconic artifacts such because the manuscript for Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand and Geordi La Forge’s VISOR from Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology, Black Past honors the numerous methods Black creators, from visionary writers like Nnedi Okorafor to groundbreaking filmmakers and artists, have influenced and expanded the science fiction style. The exhibition is a celebration of Black pleasure, liberation, and imagining futures the place Black lives thrive in galaxies and realities that transcend the on a regular basis.
Afrofuturism, Black speculative fiction, and actions like HillmanTok share a standard objective: they heart Black individuals in worlds which have traditionally excluded them. They demand we think about not solely what’s, however what may very well be. They problem us to think about futures the place Black pleasure and freedom are limitless, the place we’ve got the company to construct higher methods, and the place we’re heroes in our personal tales.
The tales we inform matter. They’re the roadmaps we use to check a freer, extra equitable world. Black storytelling reminds us that Black historical past isn’t nearly trying again, it’s about envisioning and constructing ahead. This Black Historical past Month, I invite you to have fun the ability of Black creativity not simply as leisure however as an important drive shaping the longer term. Whether or not it’s via the lens of Afrofuturism, the platforms of digital innovation, or the partitions of a museum, Black storytelling reminds us what is feasible after we dare to dream expansively.
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Michele Y. Smith is the CEO of the Museum of Pop Tradition (MOPOP), recognized for her mission-focused management within the nonprofit sector, emphasizing enterprise improvement, operations, and finance. Her strategy prioritizes variety, fairness, inclusion, accessibility, and mentoring, advocating for philanthropy’s democratization via popular culture.