In this chapter, young Black changemakers offer words of hope and calls to action for researchers, educators, organizers, and the public. Black youth envision a world without racism, and it is imperative to follow Black youth’s leads to eliminate racism. To help Black youth sustain their changemaking, it is valuable to invest in Black youth, including youth-led initiatives and Black-centered spaces. As a call to action, it is urgent to root out anti-Blackness in schools, on social media, and in broader public narratives. Each author reflects on major lessons learned from the study. We underscore how Black youth bring society hope for the future and point the way forward on the road to racial justice.

For young Black changemakers, families are a keystone of their civic engagement. Mothers, fathers, and extended family members connect youth to opportunities for changemaking and engage with them, which provides foundational launching points for youth’s deeper journeys into changemaking. Through conversations, families discuss the value of changemaking and also make space for supporting youth’s own chosen changemaking paths. These conversations help youth sustain their civic action and support youth’s attempts to create change in the world around them. Yet, families’ influences on Black youth are not only adult-driven. Young Black changemakers demonstrate agency in pursuing civic actions that center their families. For some Black youth who are engaged in helping their family members, civic engagement quite literally begins at home. Young Black changemakers are also driven to challenge racism in part to protect their own families, and they work to honor their families’ legacy by working to make the world better for them and other Black people.

Young Black changemakers are civic actors with purpose. Their changemaking is aimed at long-term, big picture visions for a racially just future. Changemaking is not fleeting or spontaneous, but rather thoughtful and purposeful. Changemaking for racial justice is a big tent, and within it, Black youth have different visions for changemaking that can improve the world for Black people, ranging from resisting and seeking to change unjust systems to uplifting Black youth and communities now and into the future. Black youth are not siloed into one domain of civic action or one way of changemaking. Instead, there are overlaps and complexities across the ways of changemaking, underscoring that each young Black changemaker is charting their own path.