This interview is part of The Reconstruct, a weekly newsletter from Sojourners. In a world where so much needs to change, Mitchell Atencio and Josiah R. Daniels interview people who have faith in a new future and are working toward repair. Subscribe here.
I’m not on TikTok, so I’d never heard of 22-year-old content creator, Taylor Cassidy. Cassidy rose to prominence after she started creating engaging and easily digestible videos about Black history. During my interview with Cassidy, she told me her goal is to make sure her audience feels uplifted and excited about learning.
I tend to be opposed to social media since I find much of it drenched with negativity and conspiracy theories, so I think Cassidy’s content provides a much-needed reprieve from what’s considered the norm. My work is deeply influenced by Black history, and so it is energizing to see someone like Cassidy introducing people to figures such as poet Nikki Giovanni or astronomer Benjamin Banneker. It’s inspiring to see Cassidy draw connections between the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and modern kidnappings carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But if you’ll allow me to drop the serious intellectual journalist act for a moment: For as educational as Cassidy’s videos are, they’re also just really funny. Yes, she’s educating her audience about the musical brilliance and progressive politics of Stevie Wonder, but she’s also wearing a full-on Stevie Wonder costume while doing it. In fact, in most of the videos that Cassidy makes, she is wearing a costume—equal parts immersive and hilarious.
@taylorcassidyj What’s your favorite Stevie Wonder Song? 🎹✨// Fast Black History @Stevie Wonder #blackhistory#blackmusicmonth#steviewonder#doido#blackmusic#musichistory#funfacts ♬ Do I Do - Stevie Wonder
Panache and a good sense of humor do not always translate from social media to written works. But having read Cassidy’s forthcoming book, Black History Is Your History, I’m pleased to tell you that she successfully manages to write an educational book that is consistent with her unique style. The book extends her project to educate people about Black history in ways that encourage and excite. In each chapter, Cassidy takes a Black historical figure—activist Marsha P. Johnson, photographer Gordon Parks, and writer Zora Neale Hurston, to name a few—and tells the reader about their life, how their work has personally influenced her, and why we should engage with it.
In my interview with Cassidy, we talk about our love of Black history and reading, what it’s like to be the only Black person in the room, the connections between Black history and religion, and the modern Black historical figures she’s following. Black History Is Your History comes out on Oct. 14.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Josiah R. Daniels, Sojourners: Tell me about how the idea for Fast Black History came to you.
Taylor Cassidy: I was 16 years old when I got on TikTok, and it was also a time when I was in an advanced history class during my junior year in high school.
And it was in this history class where we got to go a lot more in depth into American history than I usually would in other history classes. And that also opened up a lot of time for discussion among students. We did a lot more analysis and looked at things from a historical context.
In January of my junior year, I started to realize that every time I went into the classroom, and we would have discussions around history, there would always be somebody saying something that was very incorrect when it related to slavery and when it related to Black people in American history.
And it got to the point where it was very hard to go to class because people would not only say incorrect history with confidence, but I also realized that the little history about Black people that people did know was rooted in trauma. As if the only thing we experienced in history was just sadness, defeat, and horrible experiences. And while those things do exist, there’s so much more.
And so, I remember it was the day before Black History Month, and I had just had a class. I was sitting on my bedroom floor, and I thought, “I can’t just do nothing.” I had grown up learning Black history from my parents because they knew it was gonna be like this in my school, and so I decided to take out my phone and I made a 15-second video about a Black chemist named Percy Julian, and that was the first time I was learning about him at that moment, and I took that history that I learned and I tried to make it joyful, fun, and engaging so that when people watched it, they would be interested and leave with a positive energy. So, I posted it, and I believe within the week, I got 10,000 views on that video.
@taylorcassidyj FAST BLACK HISTORY. make black history viral! #fyp#blackhistory#blackhistorymonth#blacktiktok#americanhistory#theconsciouslee#blackpower#viral#pov ♬ SIX'FO - ZaeHD & CEO
I was like, I have to continue doing this. And so now I have over 100 videos on Black history.
They’re just as funny as they are educational. I love your video of Stevie Wonder. The Benjamin Banneker one is really great, too. How did the idea for Black History Is Your History come about?
Initially, I wanted it to be a show, and I really wanted to take the aspect that I loved about Black history and put it into a modern context. For me, growing up, I saw Black history figures as my superheroes, as the people that I looked up to, because there weren’t a lot of books about Black people in my library. So, I turned to Black history as a safe haven. I felt like I could relate to the stories more than the stories that I was getting in my library or the books that we would read in class.
The original concept was to combine personal stories from my life with teaching about Black history figures, explaining how they relate. I had the idea for that in 2020, and as it progressed, I started thinking about it, and I realized that it would probably do a lot more good for it to exist in book format because I felt I had already had so much screen time creating content about Black history. I thought it would be really wonderful to find a way to teach Black history to kids but also teach it in a way where maybe after reading, they’d pick up another book, and they’d continue reading.
What was it like learning about Black history when you were growing up?
Most of the places I went, I was one of a few Black kids in the room, if not the only one. But for me, there was a contrast between going home and seeing history books everywhere, and so many lessons told to me by my parents, and then going to school, where a kid says to you that slavery didn’t affect economics in the U.S. or that there were no Black inventors before the ‘80s.
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You’re sitting there with this information, fighting for your life in the classroom, arguing with people about the history and ultimately the worth of your own people and your own identity. And it becomes hard, especially when you’re the only Black kid, because you quickly learn that you don’t really have room to get angry or get too passionate about explaining it to people. At least in my experience, stereotypes are put on you so quickly—the angry Black girl, or being too aggressive, or being too combative, or too argumentative. Growing up in environments like that, I not only learned the history of my people and fell in love with it, but I feel like I really learned how to explain it to people in a very clear and concise way. Which, honestly, really helped with my storytelling and teaching online in the long run.
When you look at Black history, what connection do you see between Black history and religion?
So, the thing that immediately comes to mind for me is that during slavery, there are instances where Black people are given Bibles, but the majority of the Bible is excluded. Or the story of the Exodus is taken out. Because if you hand somebody who’s enslaved a story about slaves becoming freed, they start to get ideas, right?
@taylorcassidyj The History of Nikki Giovanni 📝👩🏽🦱// Fast Black History #blackhistory#nikkigiovanni#blackhistorymonth#nikki#hillmantok#funfacts ♬ luther - Kendrick Lamar & SZA
In instances where we do have our own community spaces and churches, there are times when that’s really our only time to dress up. That was our only time to have a break and be with one another and feel some sort of dignity. And you can see that in the civil rights movement too, in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Whenever people would go to marches, they would first convene in the church. It was an organizational place for social justice. And whenever people would go to marches—you can see in historical photos—they’re in their Sunday best, they’re wearing church hats.
When looking at Black history, the church and religion have been extremely valuable tools in maintaining faith and perseverance.
I read a Sojourners article about a lot of Black people leaving the church and finding their own individualized faith. I believe more people are looking to find that love inside the Bible, which a lot of people have not experienced in the church.
For a lot of my friends, they’ve found that there’s an air of respectability politics—especially in the Black church—that ties into finding dignity during the civil rights movement. But as it’s trickled down, respectability politics puts a lot of restrictions on Black people to keep their hair a certain way or dress this way. It also misconstrues the initial goals of religion and faith in the first place.
When I think about religion and the church as it relates to Black history, I think of community, and I think of social justice. But I also think of people wanting to break free of the restrictions and rules that were once used to maintain dignity for progress.
Who are some modern historical figures we should be paying attention to?
First of all, Carla Hayden—and she’s still alive. She was the former Librarian of Congress. [In May, President Donald Trump abruptly terminated Hayden, who had come under scrutiny from conservative activist groups accusing her of being anti-Trump.]
She opened up resources for diverse groups of people to add their stories to Congress. And even before that, she worked with the ALA. Carla Hayden deserves all of her flowers.
@taylorcassidyj The librarian who’s for the people 📚👸🏽// Fast Black History #blackhistory#booktok#librarytiktok#blackauthors#historytok#funfacts#bookgirlies#whattoread ♬ original sound - ᶜ ʰ ˡ ˡ ˣ ᵉ ᵈ ⁱ ᵗ ˢ - chllxedits
Honestly, Quinta Brunson. I really love Quinta Brunson. Everyone on my team already knows I’m a huge fan of hers. But on a serious note, I really do love that she took her personal experience of her mom being a teacher and creating Abbott Elementary, because I do think Abbott Elementary shows a lot of things that are wrong with the public school system, even if her intention isn’t to make it like a political show. It’s sparked some really wonderful conversations about education and what our kids deserve in school.
Anything else that you’d like to say here before I let you go?
Please pre-order my book, and please keep learning Black history!
“When looking at Black history, the church and religion have been extremely valuable tools in maintaining faith and perseverance.”
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