As we enter a new century in our recording of history, our snapshots may become more journalism than history. They are here to demonstrate the ongoing linkage between the present and 1619 as we continue to highlight the “afterlife of slavery” and its impact on American life.

September 11, 2001 dramatically changed the course of twenty-first American history, especially for Black American Muslims.

Hurricane Katrina severely impacted the Black community, causing significant suffering compared with New Orleans White populations. The slow federal response emphasized to many African Americans their status as second-class citizens compared with White citizens.

The history of housing segregation and exploitation continued into the 21st century as Bank of America and Wells Fargo devised a new scheme for enticing lower income Black families into risky home mortgages that resulted in the loss of millions in Black wealth.

With the election of the first African American president in 2008, Barack Hussein Obama, many people believed that the United States had moved past its racist history. However, the “birther” argument during Obama’s election campaign and throughout his presidency revealed that racism had not died. Rather, new tools and new approaches emerged to spread its ideas.

Despite ongoing poor outcomes and strong criticism of drug laws, American law enforcement has changed little in its approach to drugs. This has greatly affected the African American community, which unfairly makes up the majority of drug-related arrests.

On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were sleeping at her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky when police knocked on the door and then forced entry using a battering ram.

The mass incarceration of Black men; police profiling; murders of Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Breonna Taylor; massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina; death of George Floyd; and the countless other deaths within African American communities within in the last decade have called White attention to a reality Black people know all too well — an ongoing disregard for the dignity of Black lives and why they matter.

On August 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed an unarmed, African American teen named Michael Brown on Canfield Drive in Fergusson, Missouri. The national public reaction to the events, narratives, and legal proceedings revealed both a racially divided perception of policing practices and a systematic legal deference towards police officers and against black persons.

In response to the protests and this critical self-evaluative moment many companies and institutions declared their solidarity with Black Lives Matter and a general antiracist movement: “Schools began incorporating antiracist curricula, and companies pledged to fight anti-blackness in their organizations.”