3 Black Activists Who Changed the Movement
Three voices who shaped how we see the climate crisis. In case you missed it, there was a picture at the 2020 World Economic Forum that said more than a thousand words about the climate movement. None of them good. The photo, taken at a press conference, featured five prominent young climate activists – Greta Thunberg, Loukina Tille, Luisa Neubauer, Isabelle Axelsson, and Vanessa Nakate – who’d come to Davos to call bovine excrement on business as usual and demand real action on climate from the world’s economic leaders. Except when the photo ran in the Associated Press, it featured only the four White women. The one Black activist – Vanessa Nakate, founder of the Rise Up Movement – had simply been cut out.
WCLK's The Local Take(Saturdays 8am) reached out to our resident historian and former Atlanta Mayor and Ambassador Andrew Young to speak about our past,
Put away your textbooks and pull out your cellphones: some of the best Black history lessons are happening on TikTok.
Across the app, Black creators are posting videos that confront America’s racist past in graphic detail, use history to add context to the way race is viewed today and view history through a lens that addresses the way homophobia, colorism, age and respectability politics influence who history remembers best. They go beyond the surface level explorations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks that run rampant during Black History Month to examine lesser-known figures, and they don’t limit themselves to February.
In celebration of Black History Month, numerous news outlets as well as the University Libraries have released lists of critically acclaimed books, films and television shows that celebrate the numerous contributions and achievements of African Americans.
However, one does not need to look outside of UB to find literature on African American culture and heritage.
UB is home to researchers whose scholarship explores the impact that Black people have had across the world, as well as examines their struggles for equality. This includes several faculty members in the Department of Africana and American Studies, which celebrated its 50th anniversary of African American studies in 2019.