Through Our Lens: Connecting Black History, Photography, and Birth Stories
- allourbabies24
- Jul 8
- 3 min read
The Origins
The term Afrofuturism was coined by critic Mark Dery in 1993, but Black creatives have been building futures long before it had a name. Musician Sun Ra was talking about space travel and cosmic ancestry in the 1950s. Authors like Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany gave us speculative fiction rooted in our survival and sovereignty.
A key voice in helping define this movement is Ytasha L. Womack, author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. She describes Afrofuturism as:
"An intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation."
Her book opened the door for many of us to see Afrofuturism not just as a genre but as practice.
In Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures (Smithsonian), another cornerstone text, the editors build on that vision: honoring both the speculative and the tangible parts of how Black people reimagine time, space, and self.
Visual Futures: AfriCOBRA
Let's be clear: Afrofuturism isn't just digital or space-bound. It can be analog, ancestral, and loud with color.
Take AfriCOBRA, the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists, founded in 1968. This Chicago-based collective used art to reflect and uplift the Black community. Their palette? Bright, unapologetic "Cool-ade" colors. Their themes? Black pride, power, and potential.
Their work imagined a future where everyday Black life was already a masterpiece — no museum needed. That's Afrofuturism, too.
Did You Know? AfriCOBRA's Cleveland Connection
Founding member Jae Jarrell grew up in Glenville, learning sewing from her tailor grandfather and uncle—skills and aesthetics that became central to AfriCOBRA's revolutionary fashion and art.
Co-founder Wadsworth Jarrell, now based in Cleveland, continues crafting powerful art and scholarship, including his book AFRICOBRA: Experimental Art Toward a School of Thought.
Afrofuturism in Film + TV
Afrofuturist stories show up all over our screens. Some are obvious. Others, you feel in the spirit. A few standouts:
Black Panther (2018)– Wakanda: the dream and the blueprint.
Neptune Frost (2021)– Cyberpunk poetry and post-colonial rebellion in Rwanda.
Sorry to Bother You (2018) – Late-stage capitalism takes a wild turn.
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire (2023) – A Disney+ anthology showcasing African animators' future worlds.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Commander Benjamin Sisko(played by Avery Brooks) wasn't just the first Black Starfleet captain — he was a father, prophet, and chosen figure in a complex interstellar narrative. His storyline with the Bajoran Prophets? Pure cosmic Black spirituality.
Deep Space Nine doesn't always get its Afrofuturist flowers, but trust, it counts.
Books That Built the Blueprint
You can't talk Afrofuturism without talking books. These authors imagined beyond survival:
Octavia E. Butler– Parable of the Sower, Kindred, Wild Seed.
Samuel R. Delany– Nova, Babel-17, and trailblazing queer, Black sci-fi.
Tananarive Due – Horror and history intertwined with speculative futures.
Ytasha L. Womack – Still required reading. Her book changed how many of us saw ourselves in the future.
Birthing the Future: All Our Babies
Afrofuturism isn't just about outer space — sometimes it's the birth room, the garden, the kitchen table, the gathering quilt.
All Our Babies is a Cleveland-based collective working at the intersection of Black maternal health and Afrofuturist creativity. Through art, care work, and public installations like Yesterday, We Dreamed of Tomorrow, they turn healing into a communal practice.
They host body painting sessions, tea rituals, doula-led meditations, and storytelling spaces to help Black birthing people reconnect with ancestral practices and reimagine birth as sacred, creative, and liberating.
Their upcoming Mama Lookbook reclaims beauty, visibility, and power — showing that our mothers are not just vessels, but visionaries.
My Take: Afrofuturism as Process, Not Just Product
It's not just aesthetics. Or sci-fi. Or big ideas. It's process.
And the process is medicine.
These spaces that All Our Babies create make it to where care isn't theoretical. It's embodied. It's ancestral and radically present.
It's tea-making workshops.
It's quilting, not just to pass the time, but to pass knowledge.
Painting each other's skin, wrapping each other's bellies, and breathing together.
And none of it is just performance.
It's regulation. It's return. It's realignment.
In Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures, they talk about how Afrofuturism isn't just a genre; it's a way of being. A rhythm. A strategy. A practice.
I thought about how the old folks used to say don't practice to get it right; practice till you can't get it wrong
What we call "basic" is actually a blueprint.
Our original processes, movement, breath, storytelling, rhythm, they're not just things we do. They're technologies for staying well, staying sane, and staying together.
Afrofuturism, in this light, is about remembering the future
Pulling it through the body.
Using the old ways to survive the now.
And not cause it's cute.
But Because it's critical.
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