Transcriber: Thanasis Zantrimas Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Who gets to describe a community?
When I was a little girl, I lived in Utopia.
My community had beautiful houses, well-manicured lawns
with fresh flowers.
As children, we played games, we rode bikes, we solved mysteries,
we created adventures, and we had sleepovers.
We lived our lives like the kids in fun movies.
Fifty years later, I’m still friends with a lot of the children I grew up with.
When we see each other in the street,
we run up to each other with the same energy that we had as children.
Only now, we’ve got our own children or even grandchildren in tow.
I grew up in an all-Black neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Illinois.
My experience in my community didn’t change,
but the descriptions of my community did.
Whether I’m watching the local news or national news,
I’m sitting in the same spot for more than half a century
with the same proverbial cup of coffee, and then I’m wondering,
“Where are they talking about? Oh, my gosh, this sounds terrible.”
And then I realize they’re talking about me.
OK. No, no.
Whether it’s news media or social media, or simple gossip,
you don’t know me, and I don’t know you,
and you don’t get to describe my community.
When we rethink the hypothesis that the media
shapes how we see ourselves,
then we realize we have the power to control not only how we see ourselves,
but how the world sees our neighborhoods and our cities.
The truth is, you have the power to describe your own community.
So I decided to describe mine.
For a myriad of reasons,
African citizens all around the world live in a lot of different places.
We’ve planted roots and formed communities both near and far.
So I decided to digitize this global Black diaspora
and help reclaim the Black narrative.
It’s important that we share not only the big stories,
but the little stories too.
In a current world
where 91% of our younger generations get their information digitally,
it’s important that we fill that space with love and laughter.
More importantly, we must fill that space with accuracy and truth.
My journey started when I was looking for some images
of my grandmother’s charm school from the 1950s
in our Black newspaper called “The Chicago Defender.”
The newspaper no longer had an archivist on staff,
so I was guided to this little closed-off archive room
where they thought there’d be about 10,000 images.
Well, my teammate and I found over 250,000
beautiful images in that same room.
And I tell people, you can’t see 250,000 images of yourself
at the same time and ever be the same.
So it became my life's mission that everybody should see images like these.
We’ve partnered with newspapers, organizations, institutions,
universities, and private collections
to digitize and share what our elders knew was important enough to save.
What they didn't know was there was going to be this thing called the Internet,
where a few negative images could just permeate the airwaves
and subsequently stick in the minds of people and just cast aspersions
on whole communities in one fell swoop.
But the elders did know we should save this for some reason.
And every generation they saved it
because they knew that accurate Black history matters.
In this worldwide web and this metaverse,
we’ve got to share more than just the five minutes
of a bad act that happened in a community.
We got to share 23 hours and 55 minutes of that same day.
It’s important that our communities are seen the way we see ourselves.
What happens when the first time you hear about a city is through a tragedy?
It's a stigma that can last generations.
But what if that same city already had hundreds
or even thousands of images online?
That way, when you went to look up that tragedy,
you would see more than just that one negative note in the song of their lives.
There’s a phenomenon called the illusory truth effect,
and what happens is when you hear the same statement over and over and over,
your mind’s stored it as a fact.
So you can imagine when you hear the same thing over and over
about a group of people,
your mind will just store something about them that’s not necessarily true.
But we're working to change and challenge all of that.
We're going to flood the digital airwaves with thousands of images of our culture
that you have never seen before.
We’re building the largest digital Black archive in the world.
And as important as it is that we build it,
it's equally important that you see it.
There’s so many places to see positive images on the Internet,
but it’s important that you log on and tap in.
In your own social media channels
make sure you follow positive people and positive groups
from other cultures and other communities.
You can shape your own algorithm of the information that you’re taking in.
You don't have to suffer a barrage of negativity from a few voices.
Your truth can be a very, very positive space
with very little effort on your part.
And the power of positive images can impact
more than just our personal experience.
Imagine the societal impact
if we see the humanity in other communities we knew very little about.
Whether it’s an act of God or some other misfortune that befalls a community,
if we view them as neighbors,
then we instinctively act to help our friends.
Deciding which images of our locales and our regions doesn’t have to be reduced
to just corporate branding specialists.
We can tell our own stories.
We can put our own images of our own neighborhoods out here on this Internet.
Another answer to the question, “Who describes the community?“
is all of us.
We can describe our communities
and get that information on the World Wide Web.
But I am going to digitize
and historically, globally collect Black archives with my peers.
That’s what I’m going to do.
But your history begins with you.
The world is such a vast and everchanging place
that you can draw knowledge and strength and energy
from your own history.
You can talk to the elders in your own family.
You can gather the stories and the history of your own lineage.
Digitize and document
your childhood, your life, your community, and your friends.
And when you do, share it with the people, young and old,
in your own circles.
I can tell you from one photograph with my grandmother,
I learned that she had to threaten litigation
to go on her class trip to New York City for her design school.
I also learned that she was the first Black person to graduate from that school.
I also learned she made the dress she wore the night before
and didn't have time to make a coat.
Once my great grandmother learned that I cared about the family history,
she gave me the picture that she had of her mother, circa 1890.
She also gave me a picture of the family clan, circa 1921.
She was 25 in that photo, and she lived to be 40 days shy of 100.
But I’ve learned so much about the elders in my own family
and what they did to overcome real adversity.
It gave me the strength to know that I could accomplish
a lot of things they did.
Another reason I’m here.
But our archives contain simple images too.
Simple moments in time because they matter as well.
The conversations between humans
that happened on a date in a community at a time, and that history matters.
So I would encourage each of you to pull out your smartphones
and take selfies with the people that are around you right now ...
because that matters.
It took place in a community, on a date, in a moment in time, between humans.
And over time, those images become even more significant.
The landscape may change,
the community may change, the people will definitely change,
but those moments matter.
I encourage each of you
to learn about yourself,
learn about your family,
learn about your history and your community,
and when you do,
digitize it and share it with the world.
And let's change the world and get to know each other through positive images.
Thank you.
(Cheers) (Applause)