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Re-claiming Black Citizenship at the Crown

Centering our textured humanity in the fight for political equity.

Can you imagine an America in which you could wear the wildest, most expressive hair design to work and be fully embraced in your individuality? That America is on her way here. All she needs is your vote.

If you had told me 10 years ago that I’d one day be using my mighty pen to fight for America's democracy, I definitely would have laughed in your face.

I had long given up on the possibility that this place could ever actually live up to its own standards, that the law could possibly ever favor Black and Indigenous people. My heart has long been in Africa.

But then I met Nia Weeks and Damien D. Smith–just as Nigerian youth were proving that democracy is a real thing, with the transparent, landslide victory of a political "unknown".

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I’d often argue with my brother Fasola about whether civic engagement was worthwhile. I felt it mainly a waste of energy in a country designed to keep Black people enslaved by any means necessary. He fought me long and hard, and then Nia and Damien came along and proved his words.

Watch Nia's Black Genius.

Leave it to Black women to make America worth its own salt. Leave it to Black women to mobilize for the end of chattel slavery and the end of Jim Crow. Leave it to Black women to redeem the place that has swallowed so much of her children’s blood.

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Care for Your Coils at the Polls

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I met Nia Weeks when the film she produced with Damien D. Smith was submitted to NOIR FEST. Never would I have thought that a film about Black hair could bring me to tears. The film did such a tremendous job of explicating the emotional and psychological intricacies of living with Black hair in America.

Free to be Free: The Story of HB 382, a film about Louisiana’s journey towards the decriminalization of Black hair, shed a glowing light on the Black anxiety that threatens to kill us, just on the basis of our visage not being acceptable to our oppressors.

The tragic nature of this cultural phenomenon evokes empathy in the least empathetic, thanks to the stunning visuals, the intentionality and the striking acumen of this film.

I had never seen the political nature of our hair treated with such kindness, care and power. Damien’s poetic language of filmic storytelling captured the heart of what Black people feel about our hair and its policing. Having dealt with my own hair trauma–alopecia almost killed my confidence, while exacerbating long held health issues–I felt the urge to do everything in my power to champion this film, and the people behind it.

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Archives: A History of Our Black Future

​Black Genius: Kevin Beckford – Hip-Hop for Education Access​

​Black Genius: Dr. Jennifer Pierre & Faith Crittenden – Black Health in the Covid Era​

​Town Hall on Healing Intra-Racial Relations​

​Branding a Movement: the NOIR Co Emblem​

​A New Blueprint for Black Liberation​

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​Write for noirpress​

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Meet the Artist

Séphora Joannes is a crown artist from Martinique whose work is inspired by ancestral rituals, geometry, vegetation, sci-fi and more.

This Francophone full-time hair stylist created her visual universe to convey pride in Black coils. She was inspired by hair artist named Angela Plummer from London after going natural.

Learn more here.

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