The city of Boston has had a somewhat dubious reputation when it comes to diversity, but on Tuesday the election of Michelle Wu—a lawyer, a City Council member, and the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants—as mayor sent a meaningful message about what kind of future the city hopes to create. “From every corner of our city, Boston has spoken,” said Wu on Tuesday night. “We are ready to meet this moment. We are ready to become a Boston for everyone.”

This mayoral election in Boston differed greatly from those of years past. Acting mayor Kim Janey, who took over from Marty Walsh when he was tapped to act as President Joe Biden’s labor secretary in January, had vied for the elected position but in September failed to secure a final slot to compete against Wu. Although Janey, a Black woman, was briefly Boston’s first female mayor of color, Wu holds the distinction of being the first Asian American woman elected to the position. Wu’s rival in Tuesday’s mayoral race, Annissa Essaibi George, conceded yesterday.

Wu’s policies are largely in line with mainstream progressive legislative priorities. She supports the Green New Deal and has come out in favor of rent control and rent stabilization, a fare-free subway system in Boston, and regulations on short-term rental properties, which led Airbnb to engage in a public Twitter dispute with Wu. A mother of two, Wu is also an outspoken advocate for paid family leave, an initiative whose lack of inclusion in Biden’s Build Back Better bill has rankled many Democrats.

This story originally appeared in Vogue.

When Mary Carouba and I boarded a plane for New York City just weeks after 9/11, it felt dangerous and counterintuitive to be heading toward the scene of a terrorist attack that had killed nearly 3,000 people.

But nowhere in the news had we heard the story of a single female firefighter, police officer, or paramedic. Nor had we seen the face of a single female rescue worker in the coverage. News cameras were trained on male first responders, and the media had uniformly reverted to outdated, gender-specific language such as “policemen, firemen, the brotherhood,” and “our brave guys.”

“Where are the women?” we asked each other. We began watching the news more closely, reading newspapers, buying magazines. We knew that women had to be making noteworthy sacrifices and contributions at Ground Zero. In the rural Northern California firehouse where I volunteered, our crew was 50% women. Mary worked with numerous female police officers from multiple agencies in her job as a Sonoma County social worker.

Furious at reporters and galvanized by their oversight, we were determined to give women their rightful place in the history of 9/11. We boarded a plane in San Francisco, resolved to find and tell the stories of the women at Ground Zero.

Despite having no contacts, no funding, no agents, and having never written a book, we were the perfect team. I had a degree in journalism and had spent my career interviewing people and telling their stories. Because I was also a firefighter and emergency medical technician, I had personal experience as a first responder in the 911 system. I could feel what was happening in New York City right down to my bones.

In addition to being a social worker, Mary was a stand-up comedian and all-around extrovert. In a time before social media, she was constantly on the phone, running down one lead or another, figuring out how to get us around the unfamiliar territory of New York City. We were both native Californians who had never lived anywhere else. I had never even hailed a cab.

One by one, we found them. Each woman we interviewed knew dozens more who had been at Ground Zero. It turned out that there were more than 6,000 female police officers in the NYPD, and another 100 in the Port Authority Police Department. While the FDNY employed only 25 female firefighters, about one-third of New York City’s EMTs and paramedics were women. How could the media have overlooked them?

Most of the women who ended up in our book initially rejected the idea. “I’m no hero,” they said, time and time again. “I was just doing my job.”

But then we reminded them of the absence of female first responders in the coverage of 9/11. “We’re writing this book,” we said, “because we don’t want a whole generation of young women to grow up believing that only men can be strong, brave, and heroic.”

So, it was for future generations of girls and young women that 30 firefighters, police officers, EMTs, paramedics, and other women agreed to tell their stories and have their portraits taken by Oakland, California, photographer Joyce Benna. In the resulting book, Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion, they tell us in their own words what they saw, felt, and did when they arrived on scene of a tragedy that killed 412 first responders—the deadliest incident for firefighters and police officers in the history of the United States.

Among the deaths at the World Trade Center were three female first responders who died trying to save others: NYPD Police Officer Moira Smith; PAPD Captain Kathy Mazza, and EMT Yamel Merino. Last year, one of the women featured in our book, NYPD detective Jennifer Abramowitz, died of 9/11-rated cancer. Our book is dedicated to them. 

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden might be the first couple, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to work on their marriage. 

“We have to, I think, try a little harder to make time for one another,” Jill recently told Vogue during a joint interview with Joe. “Even the thing about having dinner together: Sometimes we eat on the balcony; last night we ate in the yellow oval, upstairs. It’s just part of the day that we set apart, and we still light the candles, still have the conversations, still put the phones away.”

Though they aren’t exactly in a “long-distance relationship,” their duties as POTUS and FLOTUS often keep them apart, and after decades of marriage, says President Biden, it feels weird not to see her every day. “I miss her,” he said. “I’m really proud of her. But it’s not like we can just go off like we used to. When we were living in Delaware and married, once a month we’d just go up to a local bed-and-breakfast by ourselves, to make sure we had a romantic time to just get away and hang out with each other.” 

“And the other thing is, she’s been traveling all over the country,” the president continued. “And doing major events for me…and for the country. And so I’ll find that I’m working on a hell of an important speech and I’m distracted. And then I may not be working on one and I want to go and hang out with her, and she’s working on an important speech! Or grading papers. We have to figure out a way—and I mean this sincerely—to be able to steal time for one another. I think that’s the deal.”

Dr. Jill Biden says splitting their time between D.C. and Delaware gives the couple “the best of both worlds”: “We have our home in Delaware; we have grandkids in Delaware. Finnegan and Maisy are at Penn. They say, ‘Nana, we hear you’re coming home; can we come down and have lunch?’ Then they clean out the refrigerator; they take bags full of food home. And then, in D.C., we have grandkids here—Naomi’s here. She just got her first job as a lawyer. So she comes over, and she’ll do movie night with us, or she’ll play tennis with her boyfriend. We have friends in both places. I guess our home base has sort of stretched from Delaware to Washington. It’s just bigger now.”

The only immigrant serving in the U.S. Senate reflects on the shattering impact of the previous administration’s family-separation agenda and explains why family reunification must be the humane cornerstone of our nation’s immigration policy. Adapted from Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story by Mazie K. Hirono.

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I was seven and my brother Roy was nine on the afternoon in March of 1955 when we left our home in rural Japan. With our mother’s palms resting lightly on our backs, we climbed the gangway onto a hulking iron ship that would carry us across the Pacific Ocean to a new life in Hawaii. I was already missing my three-year-old brother, Wayne. It had torn our mother’s heart to leave him behind with our grandparents in Fukushima. I could still see him with eyes squeezed shut, shaking his head in silent dissent as our mother tried to explain that we would be separated only for a little while. I’m not sure my little brother ever fully understood that, since Mom would have to provide for us in Hawaii as a single parent, there would be no one to take care of him while she worked, and so he would have to remain in Japan until he was old enough to start school.

When our family was finally reunited almost three years later, Wayne’s elation at seeing us burst out of him. All afternoon, again and again, he would leap onto Mom or Roy or me, wrapping his tiny arms around our necks and holding on tight. Wayne’s happiness, and my own as I pressed my cheek to his hair, would be my most vivid memory of that day.

But soon Wayne began to struggle. It would be decades before we connected his floundering at school, extreme shyness with strangers, and watchful clinginess at home with the fear of abandonment that had taken root in him during our time apart. How could we have known how damaged Wayne would be by our departure, leaving him, as we did, in the loving care of our grandparents? Yet from Wayne’s perspective, his mother was an ocean away and invisible to him but for a grainy black-and-white photograph that he held in his small hands and studied every evening.

My younger brother never finished high school. A solitary young man, he liked to pack his fishing rod and tackle and climb down to a craggy spot on Lanai Lookout, near where we lived. Wayne would fish there for hours on end, lulled by the hypnotic murmur of the ocean. He loved to have our mother cook his catch for dinner the next day. He knew how hard she had always worked to support us, and the fish he caught became his proud contribution to the family pot.

Wayne was fishing from his favorite spot on March 24, 1978, when a sudden wave washed him out to sea. Amid my profound sorrow at his death, I reflected on how difficult life had always been for my brother. From the day we had left him behind in Japan when he was three, he never again trusted that he would not wake up one day and find us gone. The insecurities caused by his separation from us at such a young age, necessary and well intentioned as it was, remained with him throughout his abbreviated life, despite the care our mother lavished upon him once we were reunited.

In the spring of 2018, the Trump administration declared a “zero tolerance” immigration policy of separating the children of asylum seekers from their desperate parents, who would now be incarcerated as lawbreakers, despite the fact that they were acting in accordance with international law. By May 2018 more than 2,000 children were reported as having been taken from their parents. Every day new images showed empty-eyed children staring out from what looked like large dog kennels, or curled under silver foil blankets on bare floors. Perhaps most wrenching was the sight of seven-year-old girls trying to comfort wailing babies in sodden diapers that had not been changed for days.

There are meteoric rises, and then there’s Bash, who has watched more than one coworker climb the ranks faster than she. This might seem somehow uncouth to point out, were it not for the fact that Bash herself is glad to talk about it. “I didn’t begrudge those people,” she tells me. When she first started at CNN, she didn’t think she wanted to be on TV at all, preferring to remain behind the scenes as a sourced-up producer. And once she did move in front of the camera, she tried to keep her head down and focus on making the most of the opportunities she did have—moderating presidential debates, landing ever more impressive interviews, breaking as much news as possible, impressing the higher-ups when she filled in for Jake Tapper on State of the Union. (He is now her cohost.)

When she wonders aloud during our interview whether people who were promoted ahead of her just had a better knack for the job or more obvious talent, she doesn’t sound like someone rooting around for a compliment. She sounds like a person who knows what she’s best at—outworking the competition and learning from them too. She points to the next generation of talent—women like current CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins and Inside Politics host Abby Phillip. “I have seen them, not just on air but behind the scenes, demonstrate an inner confidence that I did not have when I was that age,” she explains. “And that has helped with their rises. It’s earned,” she hastens to add, but it speaks to a skill set she felt it took her longer to develop. She could not have done what they’ve done.

If Bash took a more winding path to the top, it’s in part, she thinks, because she needed the time to build up a sense of herself that criticism and blowback couldn’t shake. In the end she didn’t read one great self-help book or have some incredible revelation. She just forced herself to do it—to stand up at press conferences, to ask the questions. The more she did it, the more confidence she had. The more experience she got, the more comfortable she felt at work.

Still, she is conscious of the forces at work that no amount of confidence can overcome—the ones that keep women from reaching their full potential. And even now, with her name on the marquee, she leans on the women who came up alongside her more than ever. She rattles off the names: Gloria Borger, Brooke Baldwin, Brianna Keiler, Poppy Harlow, Alisyn Camerota, Erin Burnett. “I just feel like I have a net because of this female camaraderie that exists and, to be frank, a place to bitch sometimes. Because it’s still a man’s world.” There are careful, unfair calibrations that women must make in the hope of navigating professional quandaries that Bash knows men don’t have to deal with—how to “not be seen as the whiner, as opposed to the go-getter,” how to not be perceived as a “diva,” when a man’s demanding behavior might be lauded as ambitious or passionate.

The women’s active group texts must have been a particular source of comfort during the last administration, when, in addition to the usual high-wire juggling act that exists for women in the workplace, Bash had to perform the added ritual of waking up in the Trump era: Get out of bed, look at the president’s now-defunct Twitter feed, and wonder, “Who is he attacking? Is he attacking me?” Some fretted over what would become of journalism once Trump left office, since the former president drove so much of the conversation, but Bash feels “reborn.”

Black women in the United States are three to five times more likely to die from pregnancy or postpartum issues than white women—a maternal mortality crisis that cannot be ignored. In Glamour’s Black Maternal Health series, we’re sharing these stories—and solutions.

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One week after my 32nd birthday the hot flashes began. In 2.5 seconds my body went from New York City in fall to a Thailand summer, whether it was in the middle of the night, middle of the morning, midday, mid-work break. The sweats were relentless.

Two weeks, one doctor’s appointment, and more than a hundred Google searches later, my doctor put a name to this sudden inferno: early perimenopause. A short time after that, the financial coordinator at New York University’s Fertility Clinic let me in on something. If I wanted to retrieve the good eggs I had left to increase my chances of having a baby down the line, it would cost me—cash up front—much more than I had to give.

My reproductive rights story doesn’t involve limited access to birth control or an abortion. It involves being told just two years after turning 30 that my path to motherhood could be forever thwarted, and I, a journalist with employer-sponsored insurance making just enough money at the time to cover my monthly expenses, could not afford to do anything about it.

The tears I cried over this realization are just a few in a sea of fallen tears from women. And Black women, I among them, understand that the current framework for reproductive justice must address the various ways in which systemic structures prevent women of color from achieving reproductive freedom.

“The harms that were created through white supremacy, the harms that were created through patriarchy—they came from the White House,” says Joia Crear-Perry, M.D., president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative. “So we’re saying if you created those harms from the White House, you need to undo them from the White House.”

Crear-Perry is one of several Black women pushing for the creation of a White House Office of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Well-Being (OSRHW) to be considered under the Domestic Policy Council. 

As she said to me on a video call last week, the federal government has for hundreds of years “operationalized eugenics, has operationalized believing that one race was more valuable than another.” And so her goal for this office is to ensure that women like myself have a path to motherhood and sexual well-being by disrupting the barriers that now exist due to race and class.

She’s not alone. More than 150 organizations have signed on to push for OSRHW. They include institutions whose core work focuses on a range of issues from Black breastfeeding to abortion. Collaboratively, they are urging the Biden administration to guarantee that women, in short, have access. 

“The matter of reproductive justice is so important because what we’re talking about is wanting to create some parity where everyone gets what they need, not based on their capacity to pay, or if they’re lucky enough to work at an insurer,” says Monica R. McLemore, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco. “This is a bigger discussion that takes out the polarization and elevates it to a larger discussion about what people need and deserve across their reproductive life course that will allow them to optimize who they are.”

McLemore has been working side by side with Crear-Perry to highlight the importance of equity in the larger conversation of gender policy and reproductive rights. For these Black women, it is about centering the margins, being unafraid to speak about racial injustice, and saying full-throated that ending racism includes addressing the ways in which BIPOC women are restricted in their maternal pursuits.

Let me give you an example.

When I served as the executive director of the African-American Art & Culture Complex—a community-based organization that serves the young people of the Fillmore neighborhood in San Francisco, where I grew up—drugs, poverty, and violence were all too common. 

One day, around the corner from the Complex, in a gym crowded with mostly kids and some adults, someone walked in and shot someone in the head in front of everyone. The act was unspeakable and traumatic, and I was so scared for what it would do to the community. At that time Kamala Harris was the district attorney of San Francisco, and when we spoke, her response was immediate: “How can I help?” She didn’t just help by pursuing a criminal case; she showed up and met with the community. She sat with us. She listened. She shared. She tried to help us heal those kids. 

That is who Kamala is. Will she do the work? Of course. But the work means nothing if you aren’t thinking about who the work is about. So I know that while her title has changed, she’s still that same Kamala who walked into that gym in the Fillmore and put her heart into helping a community heal. And that gives me hope, and makes me proud. 

San Francisco mayor London Breed won a special election after San Francisco mayor Ed Lee died in office in December 2017. She was elected to serve a full term—becoming the city’s first Black, female mayor—in 2019.

“She knew she had power to do something.” 

My first time meeting Kamala Harris was unforgettable. I was interviewing for a legal-adviser role on her executive team in the California attorney general’s office, and I was nervous. She started with standard questions about my work in law and politics; I asked about the most challenging part of the job. (Getting out of the day-to-day mini emergencies to focus on the big-picture agenda, she said.) Then she threw a curveball: “What’s the extent of the right to education under the California constitution?”

I hesitated, so she continued: “For example, if you have four walls, a roof, and a sign that says ‘school,’ have you provided a child with an education as required by the constitution?” 

“Surely not,” I said. “It must mean more than that.” 

She agreed, and after we dug a bit deeper, she ended the interview apparently satisfied (thankfully).

Little did I realize this was the beginning of a multiyear conversation I’d have with Kamala about children’s legal rights, what our government owes children, and why so many—especially poor, Black, and brown children—weren’t getting what they deserved. She was determined to use the power of the California Department of Justice to change that. No one asked her about it at press conferences, the office had never done this work, and she wasn’t getting pressure on it. But she saw a gap in the state’s child welfare, education, and juvenile justice systems—and she knew she had power to do something—so we created a specialized unit to enforce children’s civil rights that would outlast her tenure as A.G.

I learned countless lessons during my years working for Kamala. But this experience taught me what makes a good public servant. She has what I call “sustained impatience”—the refusal to become complacent in the face of bureaucracy, inertia, or inattention. We often think progress in government requires heroic efforts to overcome resistance. What she understood was that far more often progress stalls not because anyone is against it, but because no one is its champion. She knew there weren’t easy headlines to be had in that work, but the work itself was motivation enough. And perhaps most important, she refused to be led off track and wouldn’t give up until we were done. America is fortunate to have that kind of woman as vice president, and I’m honored to have learned about service from her.

Jill Habig is the founder and president of Public Rights Project, a legal nonprofit that works with state and local governments to enforce civil rights and economic justice laws. She served as special counsel to then attorney general Harris, deputy campaign manager on her U.S. Senate campaign, and policy lead on her Senate transition team. She teaches state and local impact litigation at Berkeley Law School.

Before Trump, we might have wanted to believe that our democratic institutions could survive a threat like him, that our Constitution and elected officials would provide checks and balances. Instead, his administration unleashed misogyny and racism across the country, even in pockets of it that we might have considered “safe.” We learned that everything can fall apart; I learned that too.

On the night of the election in 2016, I paid to have my hair done because Eric always wanted me to wear my hair up or blown straight. Otherwise, he often said my hair looked too wild. Perhaps he meant it looked too ethnic. My hair is wavy, bordering on frizzy when it’s humid. The bigger it gets, the more I like it. I thought, “What is wrong with my natural hair?” But Eric made me feel insecure about it. If I didn’t conform, I wouldn’t be pretty in his eyes. After attending a few election parties, including one hosted by Harvey Weinstein, Eric and I went to the Javits Center, where it felt as though everyone was on a sinking ship.

The past four years have sunk many of us. And not all of us have emerged unscathed. Now, as a survivor of an abusive relationship, I can offer advice that I hope helps our country. A victim-centered approach allows us to turn away from the former president. It allows us to focus on our needs, our healing, our future. I tell other survivors of abuse the following, which can apply to the American people as the victim and the former president as the partner:

Know that you are not alone and you are not crazy.

It’s okay to feel traumatized, but please don’t feel ashamed.

If your partner is not willing to acknowledge the problem and get professional help, get away. Your partner is probably not going to change.

Don’t worry about your abuser. Focus on yourself.

You are the most important part of this equation.

Jennifer Friedman, the director of Bronx and Manhattan Legal Project and Policy of Sanctuary for Families, has spoken with me about the mix of emotions—trauma and relief—that victims feel when an emotionally gaslighting abuser is removed from the picture. She also said, “The abuser has sought to silence your voice and diminish your self-worth, preventing you from feeling your own power. But you do have power, and seeking help (including speaking with an expert) may bring you more power. Taking back your power is an important step toward healing and reclaiming your life.”

My hope for 2021 is that we will say the name of the former president, our abuser, less, and say the names of those who suffered because of him more. We have the chance to chip away at the cycle of violence that we are conditioned to normalize from the time we are born and that was encouraged from the highest office in the land. We don’t have to think the same way; we just have to open our hearts and minds and listen to each other. Love, compassion, and our shared humanity will guide us, as inaugural poet Amanda Gorman said, up that hill we climb.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has spoken powerfully about her experience with sexual assault and the trauma triggered by the Capitol siege. She was disturbed by the congressmen who told her to “move on”—a tactic of abusers so that they can abuse again.

Collectively, we’re getting out of an abusive relationship. Our recovery, like my personal recovery from abuse, won’t be overnight. We have a long road ahead, but on January 20, 2021, and during the subsequent weeks, the stage was set.

Tanya Selvaratnam is the author of Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence.

If you, or someone you know, is a victim of intimate partner violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline toll-free at 800-799-SAFE or connect online at thehotline.org.

Naomi Biden isn’t letting anyone mock her grandparents. The recent Columbia Law School grad took aim at Fox News host Tucker Carlson after he made fun of President Joe and Dr. Jill Biden’s marriage. Carlson’s recent sarcastic remarks were in response to a Politico Valentine’s Day article about the president and first lady’s relationship.

“So it’s official: The Bidens’ affection is totally real,” Carlson said during a segment featuring photos of the Bidens showing PDA. “It’s in no way part of a slick PR campaign devised by cynical consultants.” After laughing, he added, “No, not at all. Their love is as real as climate change.”

Naomi Biden retweeted the video with a simple yet effective zinger: “Someone give this man a hug.”

Other people on social media expressed their disgust at Carlson’s mean comments and poked fun at the fact that climate change is, in fact, real. Stephen Colbert tweeted, “Tucker Carlson said Joe and Jill Biden’s marriage is ‘as real as climate change.’ Because it’s been around since the Carter administration, and it’s only getting hotter?”

Another user wrote, “Welp, Tucker Carlson finally got something right…Joe & Jill Biden’s love is as real as climate change.” 

One person praised Naomi’s tasteful response, writing, “Naomi Biden said in response to Tucker Carlson’s mocking of Joe and Jill Biden’s relationship that he ‘needs a hug.’ In case you needed a lesson in having class.”

The Politico article featured historians and relationship experts commenting on Joe and Jill Biden’s dynamic. “I think that the Bidens know that the affection they show for each other is serving as a healing agent,” Rice University professor and presidential historian Dr. Douglas Brinkley said in the article. “New presidents and first ladies have to be empathetic.”

He added, “When we watch [first couples] together, we don’t want to feel a tension in their marriage. We don’t want to feel that they enjoy being separated from each other. One wants to believe that there’s some harmony and deep respect there.”

So far, what we’ve witnessed of the Bidens’ relationship has been nothing short of harmonious. Dr. Biden confirmed this on Valentine’s Day by decorating the White House lawn with giant hearts with words like “kindness” and “compassion” on them. A display not only of the love within her marriage but also the love she has for our country.

Over one hundred years ago, Ida B. Wells became one of the leaders in the fight for women’s suffrage. In 1913, she founded the Alpha Suffrage Club, the first all-Black suffrage club in the state of Illinois. It was influential in the 1914 election of Oscar De Priest as the first Black alderman in Chicago. Shortly after forming the club, Wells traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate in the famed suffrage parade that March; as a Black woman, she’d been told to stand in the back—a request she defied. Wells inserted herself front and center, walking with the Illinois delegation. That’s a story you might know. What’s less appreciated is that she did it wearing her natural hair.  

I have been thinking about Wells a lot over these past few months. On January 20, I watched Senator Kamala Harris be sworn in as Vice President of the United States. Like millions of other women of color, I was thrilled to see the historical significance of Harris as a “first” realized. But I also felt a unique tug. Because Wells, who had spent almost all of her adult life fighting for this moment to be possible, was my great-grandmother. She died 90 years before it happened. 

The fact of Wells’ hair all those decades ago might not seem remarkable, especially in the context of just how much she achieved and fought for. But even now—no matter what Black women accomplish—our looks and hair continue to be subject to policy debates, legal battles, dress codes, political interpretations, and ideas about what is considered professional or not. In addition to having our work held up to different standards than our white counterparts, Black women have to endure a higher level of personal scrutiny in professional settings. We have had to navigate a racialized beauty hierarchy that prioritizes European features as ideal.

Ida B. Wells fought against white supremacy, domestic terrorism, segregation, and educational and economic inequality. And she did so while wearing her hair in its natural state. She kept her chin up and her hair styled, often adorned with pins, barrettes, and beautiful combs. 

As an orphan and later a single woman, Ida B. Wells navigated physical dangers while refusing to shrink herself in a world that criminalized blackness. Compared to her historic achievements as an investigative journalist and activist, her hair might seem like a minor point, but it was in fact a quiet, constant public statement: She took pride in her appearance. Black women’s natural hair can be straight, wavy, curly, coily, or what some call kinky. It can range in color from sandy blonde to jet black. It can grow almost to our waists or be cropped close to our heads. Our thick natural hair can be formed into cornrows, box braids, micro braids, afros, pixie cuts, bobs, twists, locs, twist outs, and buzz cuts. Black women use shampoos, conditioners, hair oil, hair lotion, vitamin oils, detanglers, curlers, rods, beads, clips, hairpins and more. We’ve spun our hair into every style imaginable, including some truly gravity-defying geometric designs.

Ida B. Wells’ commitment to wearing her hair in its natural state is just one more aspect of her legacy that connects her to some of the Black women blazing trails now. The activism of Stacey Abrams, who wears her hair in twists, helped pave the way for political victory in Georgia. Rather than shrink into obscurity after her contested defeat for governor in 2018, she created organizations that empowered the Black electorate. Her efforts contributed to the ultimate Democratic control of the U.S. senate with the elections of Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. 

At the inauguration, millions of people were introduced to 2017 national youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman—a 22-year-old woman with a powerful message woven into her poem “The Hill We Climb.” Gorman’s poem paid homage to the sacrifice and dignity of enslaved people and their descendants who built this country. She also made a splash with her natural hair, which she wore braided, styled with a headband, and adorned with gold crimps. Gorman spoke both verbally and visually with pride and power. On Twitter, she emphasized the intention behind the hairdo: “I highly suggest a headband crown for anyone wanting to stand taller, straighter, & prouder.”