BEFORE, BEYOND AND BROADER THAN U.S. INDEPENDENCE
Power Read Celebrates Change Agents through the Ages
You got to make your own worlds…You got to write yourself in.
Those words from the great futurist Octavia E. Butler was our foundational call to arms. We were spurred by the National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” (celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence). NEA identified 24 titles to promote small grants and public engagement. The selected authors, by race and gender: 14 white men, 5 white women, 3 Black men, 1 Native American woman, 1 Latina woman, and ZERO Black women.
This hardly accidental omission is typical among antagonists of Black women who would strip us of our power and our presence in this country. Rather than protest, Team Unerased responds by promoting the pivotal role Black women have played in building this nation, before and beyond America’s Independence story. Storytelling by and about Black women is a teaching, organizing and civic engagement tool. Black women’s voices are central to understanding America and the long quest for freedom.
As we witness dismantlement of more than 60 years of racial progress, we launch Power Read 25, an initiative celebrating change agents through the ages. Stories of Black women, both revered and under-acknowledged, remind us that the quest for justice has always been punctuated with adversity. We surmounted obstacles thanks to resistance, resilience and transformational courage to meet turmoil with triumph.
The initiative begins with 25 biographies that open to the public psyche the past, present and future of Black women in America’s unfolding democracy story. The titles, geared at both adult and young readers, create a pathway to encounter the nation through often overlooked narratives that reveal how Black women have resisted, organized and sparked change in the face of abominable repression.
The Power Read titles, selected by a panel of civic, literary and cultural leaders, will illuminate achievement, resilience, social change and intellectual rigor during dark days in our nation’s march to racial equality. The featured protagonists will include widely revered and little known historical figures as well as contemporary voices who have shaped our past and moments leading up to our current circumstances.
The 2026 launch will include release of titles in July, a public convening in September and reading circles throughout the fall. We will focus on Greater DC (DMV) for this initial campaign. This pilot initiative will be followed by a nationwide Power Read launched in early 2027.
As the country looks toward the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Power Read 25 invites our audience to look deeper, read wider, and understand history through the lives, labor, creativity and courage of Black women. The initiative is a reminder that history is not only etched in dates, monuments, or national milestones. It is found in lives. In choices. In stories. The biographies will share powerful testimonials of the featured protagonists who shaped culture, made sacrifices, challenged systems and built movements to make the future possible for us who follow.
What we read and whose lives we study shape awareness and inspire social change. Visit Unerased for more details.
Gwen McKinney is creator and campaign director of Unerased | Black Women Speak
