What is Blackness you ask?

Blackness is not the color of our skin

For that is only the God-given crown that makes us shine

Blackness is the beauty of a reemerging flower

Blooming in the spring time

Blackness is beauty like Nefertiti, Cicely Tyson, Angela Basset, and Lena Horne

Blackness is dignified

Blackness is regal like the approaching sunset

Blackness is royal like the Pharaohs of Egypt and Nubia

Blackness is intelligence like George Washington Carver, Alexander Twilight and Mary Jane Patterson

Blackness is indestructible like a diamond

Blackness is the soul of millions of enslaved people

That have become a tribe of free people

Blackness is music from Motown to Atlantic

Blackness is strong and fearless like thousands of Zulu warriors

Approaching a vast enemy

Blackness is always imitated but never duplicated

Blackness is always mistaken but never understood

Blackness means having the pride and joy of great people like Dubois, King Tut, Mansa Musa,

Remembering the vision of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and

Having the strength and fight like Harriet Tubman, Frederick

Douglass and many other slaves

Blackness is placed in the body and soul of every child.

It is not the shade of our skin but the feeling in our hearts and

In our souls

Blackness is Adam and Eve

Blackness was here in the beginning and will be here in the end

Blackness is me

Blackness is you

Blackness is a state of mind

Photograph by Gabi Hadiev