BY LISA ARMSTRONG ·
Black women helped launch the Civil Rights Movement in 1955. Today, we are still leading the charge. Meet six activists who are as fearless as our forebears.
Rahiel Tesfamariam: Urban Cusp
Rahiel Tesfamariam traveled to war-torn Darfur in 2005. While there she asked a local boy how he had managed living under such harsh conditions. He told her it was because he knew God loved him. “That was a turning point,” says Tesfamariam, “seeing the power of the mind. That boy, because of his faith, was able to endure; what he had in his mind allowed him to make it.”
The experience led Tesfamariam, 33, to found urbancusp.com, a site that publishes lifestyle, faith and entertainment articles designed to combat negative images of African-Americans in media. “What young people internalize daily shapes who they are,” she says. “The music they’re listening to shapes their understanding of Black masculinity, or sexuality, and part of launching Urban Cusp was to provide an alternate reality that depicts African-Americans in an intellectual, spiritual way.”
The youngest of eight children, Tesfamariam was born in Eritrea during the Eritrean-Ethiopian War. When she was 5, she moved to the U.S., and was raised by her brother and sister in the Bronx and Washington, D.C. At an early age, Tesfamariam was keenly aware of class inequality and how people are segregated. As part of her school’s gifted and talented program, she had access to opportunities that her peers in the remedial program, which was housed in the school’s basement, did not. She also witnessed the fallout of the crack epidemic that swept through D.C. in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. “I didn’t understand why people lacked compassion for others’ realities,” she says.
After graduating from Stanford University, Tesfamariam moved to D.C., where she worked at grassroots Black publications, such as Experience Reality magazine and The Washington Informer. But after her trip to Darfur, she wanted to do more than write about the problems she was seeing, so she quit to pursue community activism. She worked on antiviolence conferences and participated in D.C.’s 40 Days of Increased Peace initiative, which sponsored a wellness fair, hip-hop summit and block party. “The idea was to pack the summer with events so kids would be so busy they couldn’t do anything to harm themselves or others,” says Tesfamariam.
In 2006, Tesfamariam became a licensed minister. She attended Yale Divinity School, focusing on liberation theology—the intersection of spirituality and political issues. Starting Urban Cusp was a way for her to combine her journalistic skills, her faith and her activism to empower young people to change their communities. The site gained an instant following when it launched in July 2011, thanks to her connections to Black ministers and their congregations. Today, Urban Cusp is read in more than 200 countries. “Social consciousness empowers people to change their reality,” says Tesfamariam. “Keep them informed so there’s no way people can be apathetic. Create a sense of righteous anger, and people will be compelled to do something.”
Ciara Taylor: Dream Defenders