This chapter introduces young Black changemaking. Black youth face racism at interpersonal, cultural, and institutional levels. Young Black changemakers take civic actions to resist racism. Our work brings a fresh, contemporary look at young Black changemaking that is drawn from youth’s own voices and relevant to the current times. The research study is set in Los Angeles, a city with a long history of anti-Black racism and resistance, and coincided with summer 2020, a time of racialized police violence and uprising. Sociopolitical development theory is an important foundation for understanding young Black changemaking. We end the chapter with the 10 main ideas found in the book.

In this chapter, we presented Black youth’s reflections on summer 2020 and the powerful protest movement for Black lives that reverberated about the globe. Young Black changemakers saw summer 2020 as a watershed moment in which real changes toward racial justice were happening. Summer 2020 connected Black youth’s personal experiences of racism to a historic movement for racial justice, continuing a legacy of fighting for racial justice. Alongside profound joy, inspiration, and hope, Black youth experienced sadness, frustration, numbness, anger, and fear. We captured these youth’s feelings while they were living through this momentous time, and they were still in the midst of processing the moment, their feelings, and their role in the movement. Summer 2020 activated agency, critical knowledge, and action for some, and for others, the movement advanced and solidified their purposeful commitments to racial justice for now and into the future.

Young Black changemakers identified many factors and influences that sparked their journeys into changemaking. In this chapter, we emphasized three salient launching points: (1) Influential people across many contexts and who ranged from personally known to nationally recognized serve as models, encouragers, recruiters, and inspirations for young Black changemakers; (2) The promise of fun and social interactions get young people in the door, where they build deeper connections and have a cascade of meaningful experiences; (3) Youth’s own agency leads them to decide to become changemakers and seek out changemaking opportunities that enable them to pursue passions and chart their own trajectories. Our description of these three launching points builds on our prior discussions of experiencing racism and developing Black identity in Chapters 3 and 4 that also spark changemaking.

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.

Black youth who attend school in non-Black spaces do not always feel welcomed or comfortable, and they regularly experience everyday racism that is interpersonal and institutional. Young Black changemakers use multiple strategies to resist racism. Resistance involved creating safe spaces in schools they could claim as their own, holding administrators accountable, and raising awareness of Black culture and experiences. Black youth noted the importance of authentic allies in non-Black spaces, and also shared the burdens that arise from the emotional labor of being in non-Black spaces and engaging in racial justice work.

This chapter shared Black youth’s perspectives on how civic organizations helped develop their agency and sustain their changemaking over time. Civic organizations supported youth in developing agency through: (1) seeing impact from their civic actions; (2) taking ownership of their civic work; (3) gaining critical knowledge; (4) feeling encouraged by adults; and (5) being in community with other Black people. Any civic organization that works with youth has the potential to create these opportunities for Black youth, but Black-centered organizations play an especially valuable role in offering safe spaces for Black youth to use their voices, opportunities for gaining critical knowledge about Black history, and opportunities for building community with other Black people. Service organizations offered opportunities to see immediate tangible impacts through helping others and taking ownership within organizational structures, and in contrast, advocacy organizations offered opportunities to see impact over a longer term and amplified youth voice to community audiences. Despite these distinctions, youth experienced opportunities to build agency across both service and advocacy organizations.

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.

Young Black changemakers take pride in their connection to Black communities of past and present. This strong and positive Black identity motivates their changemaking. Black identity intertwines with other identities – such as gender and social class positions – to inform experiences of oppression and changemaking in response. Commitment to and love for Black communities empowers young Black people to cope with and resist racism in ways that protect their personal identities from threat and draw on the strengths of their personal narratives. Young Black changemakers find civic purpose and power in the legacy of Black social justice leaders and lean into that history to honor their place in Black communities. The relationship between identity and changemaking is reciprocal. For these young people, pride and connection to being Black fed their desire to eradicate racism through changemaking. Engaging in changemaking for a better world for Black people also deepened their connections to Black people and Black communities.