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LOGAN BROWNING: Hi, I'm Logan Browning.
I have been acting for more than half my life at this point,
so 10 years.
I'm 20.
Just kidding.
I started acting, like Frances said, when I was 14,
and it's been an amazing journey.
I've gotten to play really amazing characters.
And so that's how I ended up on a really cool show called
"Dear White People."
Through the journey of being on that show,
I've learned so much about race, so much
about myself, my own identity, which I did not
expect jumping onto that show.
You know, didn't really think I was
going to be facing light skin privilege
when I signed that first contract.
And it's been a really amazing journey.
And yeah, now I'm moving on to directing,
which is really awesome.
MICHAEL TUBBS: Then I went to the White House,
and I partied in Cape Town.
And then when I got back, I got to reenact these Freedom Rides
with the original Freedom Riders.
So I spent 10 days with the original Freedom Riders,
and we went from DC to New Orleans.
So we went to like this real, Montgomery, Alabama,
where the people were actually beaten in Montgomery.
It was just a really very powerful and special time.
And from them, I learned a lot.
The first thing was that they were all
19, 20, 21, 22 years old when they were on this bus.
And Dr. King was 26 when he started the bus, when he led
the bus boycott of Montgomery.
So they were all really young, and they would say things.
And then there was one conversation in particular,
a man, Bob Singleton.
He's professor at LMU now.
We brought him back to Stockton for Black History Month,
and we're on the back of the bus and I'm cracking jokes
and he was just staring at me.
So I'm staring back at him.
I thought, OK, I'll be good and be quiet.
And then he says, young man.
And I say, yes sir.
And he said, I was arrested on August 4, 1961.
Why is it that day important?
I said, because you were arrested.
And that's important for my freedom.
I would not be on this bus if you weren't arrested that day.
I heard you, I was listening.
And he laughed, and then he said, on that day,
Barack Obama was born.
And then he said, I was 19 years old,
I had no idea that the decision I made at 19
would pave the way 50 years later for a kid who
couldn't get a cup of coffee to become president.
And then he said, what are you doing today
so that 50 years from now, a kid in Stockton
has every opportunity you have?
One of my biggest mentors is Marian Wright Edelman.
I was able to be in part of her programs
all throughout college.
So I would get these just nuggets of wisdom from her.
And the biggest one she said, was
that it's a privilege to struggle for justice.
Justice work is like a baton.
It's a privilege to be given the mantle
to keep the work forward.
So I've just learned a lot.
CLARENCE JONES: 1956 and 1968, aside from President Abraham
Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation of 1863,
Martin Luther King Jr. may have done more
to achieve social, racial, political and economic justice
in America than any other single event or person
in the previous 400 years of history of our country.
His tough love of nonviolent civil disobedience, Dr. King
forced America's conscience to publicly confront
the contradiction between the reality of how it treated
12% of its population, African-Americans,
and those precepts enshrined in our Declaration
of Independence.
DARYL DAVIS: I would attend Klan rallies and different things.
As I said, this is about 27 years ago.
Towards the end of the rally, you
can see the burning cross in the background.
This one was about almost four years ago.
The person was in Maryland.
That one is in Missouri towards the end of a rally.
Now what do I do with these things?
I talk to people.
I try to learn and understand.
PATRISSE CULLORS: I was on social media,
like many of us are.
Angry and upset and trying to figure out
how to understand what was happening.
And I came across a good friend's Facebook post,
Alicia Garza.
And she wrote Black Lives Matter,
and then I put a hashtag on it.
And Alicia was like, what's a hashtag?
And I was like, it's this thing that can go viral.
But I'm also a trained organizer.
So I didn't just, I wasn't just interested
in an online campaign.
I was interested in how we translated Black Lives
Matter to the ground.
And how it really could be a grassroots movement that
can bubble up, change the world, change the country.
And on July 15 when we solidified Black Lives
Matter as a political project, I wrote on social media again.
I said, hey, Alicia and I have started this project called
Black Lives Matter.
We hope that it will impact more than we can ever imagine.
ANGELA FORD: We started with the "Chicago Defender."
Now, many people know, and I don't
want to preach to the choir, but the "Chicago Defender"
started in 1904, and it's essential to black history.
Because as we were freed as slaves,
everybody needed to know, people wanted to start migrating away.
And the "Chicago Defender" was different
from other newspapers, and they took the initiative
to actually start getting these newspapers down South.
So they partnered with the Pullman porters.
And the Pullman porters were, in a way to make extra money,
they were distributing and selling the papers.
When down South, it was kind of frowned upon for Black people
to actually even read, let alone get the scoop on where to go.
SIMIDELE ADEAGBO: This time last year, I was in Pyeongchang,
South Korea making history as the first Nigerian
to ever compete in the Winter Olympics.
I also made history as the first Black and African woman
to compete in the sport of skeleton at the Olympics.
Now, this all sounds wonderful, but you might be wondering--
outside of the amazing pizza that's available at the Olympic
Village, and it was very, very good, by the way--
why would I, a then 36-year-old, mid-level professional
working at the time at one of the world's most
recognizable brands, I was working at Nike,
with a fancy job title, decide and choose
to put all that aside and go on a 100-day journey
to pursue the Olympics.
Well, for me, it was all about shifting the narrative.
And this is super important, because this was basically
the driving force, the motivating force that
led me to do what I did.
Shifting the narrative was very important
because my journey was inspired by the fact
that I discovered that no African or Black woman had ever
competed in the sport of skeleton at the Olympics.
And I thought, wow, we have over a billion people in Africa
and there's not been one person?
STEPHANIE HICKS: And so when you're talking about what we
can do, I think that we begin to learn when we start to create
different institutions, different social, political,
economic structures that have different messages about who
matters and who doesn't.
And so then we start to internalize
those messages as opposed to the ones that
have been internalized.
Everyone, I think, can take part in that in different ways.
But I do think that's possible.
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