Photos: Black Girl Summer Cultural Learning Tour 2025

The Lighthouse
5 days ago
1 min read

Theme: Still Here | Memory, Power and the Practice of

Freedom

Four young Black women with Brown skin each smile and hold copies of a book called "Badass Black Girl: Quotes, Questions, and Affirmations for Teens" — Participants received a book of quotes, questions and affirmations for young Black women. image credit: Tafari Melisizwe

This year, we honored the legacy and ongoing presence of Black resistance in the U.S. South. Through an intergenerational journey, we explored the places and stories that illuminate how Black girls and women have shaped — and continue to shape — the fight for liberation. It served as a declaration of survival, a study in resilience and a space to imagine freer futures together.

Dr. Rhonda Matthews, a Black woman with a gray afro wearing a loose-fitting Black shirt dress and black combat boots, stands in front of a screen that reads, "Mental Health" and Post-traumatic stress." — Dr. Rhonda A. Matthews kicks off a series of workshops to set the stage for the tour. image credit: Tafari Melisizwe

With their backs to us, four young Black women observe a museum graphic with a timeline ranging from 1791 to 1829. At the top is an a sketch with an overhead view of a slave ship. — Participants explore a timeline of the American enslavement system at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum image credit: Tafari Melisizwe

Two young Black women one with teal braids, one with orange-red braids, huddle together and smile down at a notebook. — Participants explore storytelling during the tour. image credit: Tafari Melisizwe

Under clusters of thin trees, a group of Black men and women circle loosely around a tour guide, a white woman holding an umbrella. — Participants tour the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. image credit: Tafari Melisizwe

In an outdoor corridor, Natalie Collier, a Black woman with brown skin and short-cropped hair sidehugs a Black woman with locs — Founder Natalie A. Collier finds a moment to connect with Stephanie McKee-Anderson, Executive Artistic Director of Junebug Productions, a New Orleans, theater committed to supporting artistic works that "question and confront inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the Black community." image credit: Tafari Melisizwe