Freds Dissonance

Day 16 — The 2010s: Bantu Knots

The 2010s were a coiling of memory, resistance, and future like Bantu knots, each twist holding history and vision.

We saw Colin Kaepernick take a knee and turn silence into resistance.
We saw the National Museum of African American History and Culture open its doors, placing our story at the center.
We saw Black film and storytelling reshape the world — from 12 Years a Slave to Moonlight, Hidden Figures, and Black Panther.
We heard our truth in To Pimp a Butterfly and the sound of a nation confronting itself.

We watched the myth of a “post-racial” America unravel and a new generation rise, organize, and lead.

The 2010s reminded us:
Blackness is not a moment — it is a continuum, a system of knowledge, a future-making force.

So what are we coiling now?
What future are we shaping?

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

Bantu knots t.pierre

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Day 14 of Black History — The Spectrum

The 2010s reminded the world that Blackness is not a monolith.
It stretched, expanded, contradicted, and created all at once.

The blerd rose in full color.
Black nerds claimed space in comics, coding, anime, science, and gaming.
Representation shifted from side character to storyteller.

The jerkin era gave us movement, style, and youth expression.
Skinny jeans, bright colors, dance crews, YouTube culture.
A generation creating its own stage without permission.

At the same time, a necessary awakening.
The formation of the Black Lives Matter movement after the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and so many more.
We witnessed, in real time, what had always been true.
The camera didn’t create the violence.
It removed the ability to deny it (yet).

This decade held both joy and grief.
Innovation and protest.
Dance battles and marches in the streets.

Because Blackness is not one thing.
It is scholars and street poets.
Gamers and activists.
Designers, dancers, dreamers, and disruptors.

The 2010s taught us this truth:

We are a spectrum.
And every shade carries power

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

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Day 13: We Are Going to Mars 🚀

In the 2000s, Black imagination expanded beyond survival.

As Nikki Giovanni told us:
“We are going to Mars.”
Not because we’re running from Earth, but because we are bold enough to imagine a universe where we belong everywhere.

And we proved it.

Ruth Simmons became the first Black president of an Ivy League university.
Ursula Burns became the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company.
Robert L. Johnson became the first Black billionaire through media ownership.
Edward Enninful became the first Black editor-in-chief of British Vogue.
Gabby Douglas became the first Black woman to win Olympic all-around gold.

At the same time, Black scientists, coders, and astronauts were designing the future.

Because the dream was never just to make it out.
The dream was to go further.

The ceiling is no longer the city.
It’s the galaxy.

We are going to Mars. 🚀✨

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

Braidst.pierre

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Day 12: The Blueprint Generation

Today we honor Black youth innovation in the 2000s.

Before influencers were brands, we were building culture in basements, on MySpace pages, in barbershops, in dorm rooms.

The 2000s belonged to young Black creators.

Allen Iverson changed the league without asking permission. Cornrows, tattoos, baggy fits, hip hop on the court. They called it unprofessional. Then the culture became the brand.

Hip hop went digital.
Mixtapes moved online.
Streetwear became global business.
Sneaker culture became a billion dollar economy.

Black youth shaped sound, style, and software at the same time.

In science and tech, young Black innovators were coding, engineering, and building new pathways. From students entering STEM in record numbers to the next wave of founders and designers, we were creating in spaces we were once locked out of.

In 2008, Barack Obama used digital organizing and grassroots energy to become President. Young Black voters showed up in historic numbers. His leadership reshaped what political leadership could look like and pushed a new generation of politicians to be more diverse, more connected, and more accountable to community.

But even in innovation, there was tension.

Viral dances traveled faster than credit.
Style traveled faster than ownership.
Platforms grew faster than protection.

Still, we built.

The 2000s proved something powerful.
Black youth are not just trendsetters.
We are architects of the future.

Today we honor the generation that turned side hustles into systems and creativity into currency.

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

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Gavin + community collaborators

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Day 11: When We Doo It

Today we honor the hypocrisy.

When we do it, it is a problem.
When they do it, it is innovation.

Our slang becomes marketing language.
Our edges become beauty trends.
Our bonnets become fashion statements.
African American Vernacular English becomes branding strategy.

But when we wear it, it is unprofessional.
When we build it, it is urban.
When we own it, it is too much.

In 1967, when Black Panthers legally carried fi****ms to monitor police brutality, California passed the Mulford Act with support from Ronald Reagan and the NRA. Open carry suddenly became dangerous when Black people exercised it.

In 1998, Surya Bonaly landed a one blade backflip at the Nagano Olympics. The arena erupted. The judges deducted her. The move had been banned since 1976 for being too dangerous and not fitting the sport’s image.

In 2024, the International Skating Union removed the ban. Same ice. Same risk. Different response.

When we do it, it is a problem.
When they do it, it becomes history.

Today we honor the ones who did it anyway.

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

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Day 10 of Black History Month

The high top fade wasn’t just a haircut — it was elevation.
Sharp lines. Vertical ambition. A declaration that Black identity could take up space and reach higher.

Pop culture made it iconic — The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Juice, Tupac Shakur — but the fade carried meaning far beyond entertainment. It mirrored a decade where Black excellence rose in rooms long closed to us.

The 1990s were a height moment in real life:
• Mae Jemison became the first Black woman in space, expanding who we imagined among the stars.
• Carol Moseley Braun shattered barriers as the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
• Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize, proving Black stories are world literature.

At the same time, the country was forced to confront its contradictions. The beating of Rodney King, the L.A. uprisings, the O.J. Simpson trial, and the Million Man March exposed how justice, visibility, and power were still uneven.

The high top fade held all of that.
Precision and protest. Style and survival.
A reminder that even when the world tried to cut us down, we kept growing upward.

Day 10 honors the height — of our hair, our history, and our refusal to stay small.

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

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Day 9 of Black History — We Honor Defiance.

In 1971, journalist Melba Tolliver was reprimanded by WABC-TV for wearing her natural hair. While covering the wedding of President Richard Nixon’s daughter, Tricia Nixon, Tolliver was pressured to change her appearance or wear a wig.

She refused.

Her choice was not about fashion—it was about dignity, autonomy, and the right to exist as a Black woman without apology. Long before CROWN Acts and corporate DEI statements, Melba Tolliver stood firm, reminding the world that professionalism was never meant to erase identity.

Today, we honor her courage and every act of quiet resistance that moved us forward.

Credits

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

Hair & Makeup


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@ Michelle + community collaborators

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Day 8: Soul Glo — 1980s

Day 8: Soul Glo — 1980s

This is hard, but necessary.

By the 1980s, Black culture was not just entertainment, it was infrastructure for America’s profit. Hip hop and R&B were exploding, but ownership was quietly slipping away. Major labels consolidated power, and Black artists increasingly became products rather than partners.

At the same time, mass incarceration was accelerating.

In 1982, when Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released “The Message,” the U.S. incarcerated just over 400,000 people. That same year, the War on Drugs expanded federal drug agencies, mandatory minimums, no-knock warrants, and militarized policing. Between 1980 and 1987, the prison population grew 76 percent, surpassing half a million people.

Hip hop did not cause this.
Hip hop responded to it.

As crack flooded Black neighborhoods, policing shifted from community-based to paramilitary. Media pushed racialized language like “crack babies” and “super-predators.” The system created the conditions, then blamed the culture for surviving them.

Gangsta rap emerged as testimony, not instruction. Songs like Ice-T’s “6 ’N the Mornin’” and N.W.A. weren’t fantasies. They were reports from communities under siege. As Killer Mike later said, hip hop became “our blues,” a mirror of lived reality.

But once that reality proved profitable, the industry leaned in. Violent stereotypes became marketable. White America consumed the spectacle while distancing itself from the policies that produced it.

By the 1990s, hip hop was the dominant youth culture in the world.
By 2025, African Americans control only a small fraction of the ownership behind it.

Soul Glo isn’t just about shine.
It’s about extraction.
It’s about how Black pain became a commodity while Black communities paid the price.

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

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Day 7 Defying Gravity The Blowout Afro

We honor defying gravity.
The blowout afro defined good trouble and positive defiance in the face of laws and systems designed to strip us of dignity. Even when policies tried to police our bodies, our beauty, and our presence, they could not stop our movement.

Throughout history, Black women’s hair has been politicized and controlled. As far back as the late 1700s, before Louisiana became part of the United States, the Tignon Laws forced free Black women to cover their hair. The goal was control, severing African women from their cultural roots while suppressing their visibility and autonomy.

During the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements, hair became resistance. The afro emerged as a political statement, worn boldly by organizers, artists, and members of the Black Panther Party as a declaration of pride and self definition.

That policing did not disappear. It evolved.

Today, hair discrimination remains one of the most common forms of racial bias. Studies show Black women with natural hairstyles are less likely to receive job interviews and more likely to be disciplined at work. Research also shows Black women are significantly more likely to be penalized for their hair and pressured to conform to white standards of professionalism.

The CROWN Act exists because hair discrimination is racial discrimination. While civil rights laws prohibit discrimination based on race, the CROWN Act makes clear that targeting hair texture and culturally significant hairstyles is illegal.

The blowout afro is not a trend.
It is defiance.
It is dignity.
It is history refusing to bow.

Black HairStory Day 7

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

Hair
& .t.pierre

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This is Hairstory — The African American Timeline of Hair
A living archive built with love, skill, and deep respect for Black identity.

This is the Afro
and it is history

Day 5 of Black History: The Afro

The Afro reminds me of our hair
coil electrified and stretched
a living archive of who we were
long before we were treated as human

We were Americans before America loved us back
before marriage was legal
before Jim Crow tried to name us lesser
and still, we showed mercy
even saving racist people from their own demise

African Americans were caught in every war
Black women stood tall through every era
We honor good trouble
We honor defiance for the collective good

From mass protest to quiet invention
we built culture where none was offered
we made beauty where survival was required

“The Afro is a symbol of diasporic resistance, a rejection of an imposed value system,”
writes Emma Dabiri in Don’t Touch My Hair
“To wear an Afro is a defiant up-yours to such a system.”

By the mid to late 1960s, the Afro became Black pride made visible
a declaration during the Black Power movement
a living statement of “Black is Beautiful”

In 1969, Newsweek reported that 70% of young northern Black Americans
and 40% of southern Black Americans
embraced natural hair
and the world began paying attention

Uprooted
good trouble
and refusing assimilation

—-

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

Hair


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Production & Cultural Direction


Models
+ community collaborators

Outfit


This is Hairstory — The African American Timeline of Hair
A living archive built with love, skill, and deep respect for Black identity.

This is the Afro
and it is history

Day 5 of Black History is Victory Rolls

Today we honor beauty and brains, wit and wisdom.
Women who shaped the world and the movement.
From those who were told they were not woman enough
to those whose cells helped heal the world.

To name a few:

Sybrina Fulton, mother of the movement, whose grief became a call for justice after the loss of her son Trayvon Martin

Henrietta Lacks, whose HeLa cells transformed modern medicine and made life-saving research possible across cancer, polio, and beyond

Althea Gibson, the Jackie Robinson of tennis, who broke barriers and rewrote who was allowed to win

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, a pioneer who inspired generations of Black women lawyers and leaders

Audre Lorde, whose fierce poetry named truth, power, and the fullness of Black womanhood

Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman pilot, who refused every limit placed on her sky

Rebecca Crumpler, the first Black woman physician, who practiced medicine when freedom was still fragile

Phyllis Wheatley, whose words proved our intellect long before the world wanted to listen

Nekima Levy-Powell, attorney and activist, whose voice, strategy, and courage continue the tradition of Black women turning complacency into action and hope into policy

Victory rolls remind us that Black women have always carried brilliance with grace and resistance with style.

—-

Creative Director & Vision
(Sydney Edwards)

Hair & Make up
& .t.pierre

Photography


Production & Cultural Direction


Models
Sydney + community collaborators

Outfit


This is Hairstory — The African American Timeline of Hair
A living archive built with love, skill, and deep respect for Black identity.