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Recent events involving state violence and active mobilized resistance within Black communities in the United States has made visible the political work of teenage and young adult Black women. Active resistance as well as political theorizing and practice among Black girls is, however, is not a recent development or new social phenomenon. This talk will center on over a decade and a half of ethnographic research with young Black women in Detroit, MI and Newark, NJ to address the ways Black girls are at the forefront of acts that support and protect their communities while transforming the spaces and institutions that threaten Black life. Their work occurs every day in spaces we are encouraged to ignore and through practices that are often overlooked or demeaned. Through theory grounded in ethnography, we can trace how Black girls’ political work moves beyond a naïve or impotent mandate to love, or the imperative to simply survive.

Free and open to the public.