These seven Black women wrote with urgency, imagination and unflinching truth.
Look What SHE Did! is a nonprofit filmmaking team that has produced hundreds of three- to four-minute films of women telling the stories of the trailblazing women who inspire them.
In honor of Black History Month, we’ve curated seven of our favorite stories on Black writers, thinkers and poets capturing the human experience: Barbara Brenner, Phillis Wheatley, Octavia Butler, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ida B. Wells, Hannah Crafts and Adrienne Kennedy.
Barbara Brenner
Barbara Brenner was a breast cancer activist and led the organization Breast Cancer Action to raise awareness and bringing attention to the importance of research and prevention. In this episode of Look What SHE Did!, Anne Galjour shares the story of a woman whose work changed breast cancer activism.
She was a hellraiser.
Anne Galjour
A lifelong activist, Brenner played a pivotal role in changing the way we think about breast cancer today. Her work continues to influence cancer research today, reminding us why her story still matters.
In this unscripted episode, Galjour brings her story to life as part of Look What SHE Did!, a nonprofit dedicated to sharing stories of remarkable women who changed the world. Stories are shared conversationally and fact-checked afterward for accuracy.
Phillis Wheatley
Ripped from her West African roots as a child, Phillis was sold to the Wheatleys, a rich Boston family. Quickly noticing how intelligent Phillis was, the Wheatleys encouraged her education, specifically her poetry. When American publishers rejected her, she traveled to Europe with the Wheatleys and successfully published her book. Her work continues to influence literature today, reminding us why her story still matters.
She found freedom inside of her.
Anne Haley-Brown
In this episode of Look What SHE Did!, Anne Haley-Brown shares the story of a woman whose work changed African American representation in literature.
Octavia Butler
What we do not see, we assume cannot be. What a destructive assumption.
Octavia Butler
Writer Octavia Butler’s enduring legacy lies in her recognition that Blackness and queerness will persist in the future. Revered as the pioneer of Afro-futurism, Butler discovered her passion for writing after watching a bad sci-fi film, challenging herself to do better—and she did. In a genre that rarely included Black and queer women, Butler knew it’d be an uphill battle to prove herself in the science fiction space but her unwavering work ethic and belief in herself paid off.
Unfortunately, she did not live to witness the full extent of her success. Just like the matriarch in her novel Parable of the Sower, her ashes now rest on Mars—a testament to her indomitable spirit.
Nonprofit founder Madin Lopez reflects on the woman who gave her the blueprint to live her own life by.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about life and injustices in Black communities in Chicago where she grew up. Her popular novels, Annie Allen and Maud Martha, depict the journeys of young Black women finding themselves in an unkind society. In 1950, Brooks was the first Black Pulitzer Prize winner for Annie Allen.
A young poet herself, Treniece Mone, has been inspired by Brooks since reading “A Song in the Front Yard,” Brooks’ poem about a girl believing she is brave enough to explore the world beyond what she knows.
In our film, Mone recites from her own poem inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks called “Brooks and Her Books”:
“She holds us like her honey. And stores us not in jars, but on pages like her bread. She savors things. And we should do the same for her.”
Ida B. Wells
What a woman.
Born in slavery she became one of the most famous women in America, a bold investigative journalist and outspoken activist for the civil rights of African Americans and women, founding her own newspaper as well as co-founding the NAACP.
Ida B. Wells wrote about segregation and racial inequality, ultimately focusing her brilliant mind and fearless heart on the scourge of lynching, the unpunished murders of black men and women in America. She was viciously attacked for speaking out about “racial terrorism,” as she named it, but it didn’t stop her. In 2020 Ida B. Wells was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her groundbreaking work and its legacy.
Erin Aubry Kaplan tells us the story, beautifully capturing the spirit of this powerfully determined woman.
Hannah Crafts
Writer Sonay Hoffman tells the story of Hannah Crafts, a former slave who risked everything to write her novel. As a slave and later, during her daring escape, the self-taught Hannah secretly penned a historic narrative whose discovery and worldwide reception over 150 years later would have been unimaginable then.
Adrienne Kennedy
Playwright Zakiyyah Alexander discusses writer Adrienne Kennedy. Her unprecedented play Funnyhouse of a Negro won the Obie in the ’60s, launching a career that defies categorization. Lyrical, violent, dreamlike, deeply personal but not naturalistic—critic Alisa Solomon describes Kennedy’s work as “the process of turning memory into meaning.”
In this interview, Alexander describes her recent experiences with iconoclast Adrienne Kennedy.
Much of this post was originally published by Look What SHE Did! The videos and descriptions have been republished with permission. Explore the nonprofit’s entire film collection, plus some other short films previously curated at Ms.
