Black History Rocks shares the fullness of Black history, the people, the places, and the eras, so that no one has to discover it alone.
“You could have chosen any topic in the world. Why would you decide to write and teach about Black history?”
I have been asked this question more times than I can count. And every time, my answer begins in the same place: with a girl watching MTV, a Tupac interview, and a name she had never heard before. I built Black History Rocks for her. I am still building it for her. Because I know she is still out there, searching, curious, hungry for a history that no one has handed her yet. I know she exists because she was me.
It started with Tupac on MTV
I was young when I saw the interview. Tupac was on MTV, talking about the Black Panther Party, naming people, referencing history, speaking with a conviction that made it clear he wasn’t just reciting facts. He believed every word. And he was naming people I had never heard of. Not once. Not in school, not at home, not anywhere.
That moment created a spark. I started searching. And one search led to another person, which led to another event, which led to another era of history I had never been taught. The more I found, the more I realized how much had been left out, not by accident, but by design.
“One interview. One name I didn’t recognize. That was all it took. Black history has had me ever since.”
Public schools drop the ball when it comes to sharing the fullness of Black history. So much is omitted: entire movements, entire figures, entire chapters of American life that shaped everything we live with today. Children learn the bare minimum, and even that minimum is often skewed. So they grow up not really knowing who they are or where they come from.
The people who poured into me
As my passion grew, people recognized it and met me where I was. The librarians at my public library and my school library were extraordinary. They knew their shelves in a way no search engine can replicate. They handed me books that didn’t just give me facts. They gave me stories. They introduced me to eras and people I would never have found on my own, and they made the journey feel less like research and more like discovery.
Over time, I met educators, mentors, and scholars who saw my hunger and pointed me toward more. That community shaped me. But I also know that not everyone finds those people. Not everyone has a librarian who notices. Not everyone has someone to hand them the next book, the next name, the next thread to pull.
The conversation that started everything
After college, I found myself in a familiar frustration: I couldn’t find the job I was looking for. I wanted to center Black history professionally, to document it, share it, preserve it, travel to the places where it happened and bring those stories back to people, and that job simply didn’t seem to exist. I was lamenting this to my mom one day when she stopped me.
She said: “Maybe the job you’re looking for doesn’t exist because you’re supposed to create it.”
“Maybe the job you’re looking for doesn’t exist because you’re supposed to create it.”
— Brittany’s mom
Lightbulb moment. I sat with it, briefly, and then I moved. I secured the name. I secured the domain. I filed the LLC. I started building the job I had always wanted, one that would let me share the fullness of Black history: the people, the places, the eras, the ups and downs. The stories that textbooks skip and the sites that time is slowly erasing.
I have been building on it every single day since.
What Black History Rocks actually is
BHR is not just a website. It is not just a social media platform. It is a space where the fullness of Black history lives, the triumphs and the tragedies, the well-known figures and the ones history forgot, the classrooms and the physical places where history actually happened.
I document Black historical sites personally, traveling to the places where this history unfolded, standing in those spaces, and bringing those experiences back to an audience that may never get to go themselves. Preservation matters to me as much as sharing does. A historical site that disappears takes its story with it. Part of what BHR does is bear witness, to make sure those places are seen and remembered before they are gone.
“I wanted to create something that would make the journey less arduous for someone else just starting theirs.”
A museum that confirmed what I already knew
When the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture opened its doors, Black History Rocks already existed. I had already been building. But walking through that museum on opening day, surrounded by thousands of people who had traveled from across the country to stand in that space, confirmed something I had felt all along: people are hungry for the fullness of this history. They always have been. The demand was never the question. Access was.
That is what BHR is built to solve. Not a museum you visit once. A resource you return to. A community you belong to. A platform that meets you wherever you are in your journey.
Now is the moment when this history matters most
I am updating this article in 2026, and I want to say something plainly: we are living in a moment when engaging with the fullness of Black history is not optional. It is essential.
Across the United States, Black history is being debated, restricted, and in some cases removed from school curricula. Books are being banned. Educators are being told what they can and cannot teach. Historical sites are underfunded, underprotected, and at risk. The very language of history, words like “systemic racism,” “the legacy of slavery,” “Reconstruction,” is being treated as controversial in classrooms where it used to be taught as fact.
“When history is erased, it doesn’t disappear. It just goes underground, where it becomes harder to teach, harder to find, and easier to distort.”
This is exactly why Black History Rocks exists. Not to be political. Not to place blame. But to make sure that the full, accurate, documented story of Black people in America, in books, in communities, and in the physical places where that history happened, remains accessible to everyone, regardless of what is happening in legislatures and school boards across the country.
The families who need this history most cannot wait for the school system to provide it. They are coming to platforms like this one. And we will be here.
Why this history belongs to all of us
Black history is not a supplemental add-on to American history. It is American history. The story of the Middle Passage, of slavery, of Reconstruction, of Jim Crow, of the Civil Rights Movement, and of contemporary Black history in the making is woven into the fabric of everything this country is, its economy, its politics, its culture, its Constitution.
Sharing the fullness of that history doesn’t just help Black children understand themselves. It helps all children understand the nation they are inheriting, its full complexity, its real failures, and the extraordinary resilience of the people who, generation after generation, refused to let injustice have the final word.
So why Black history?
Because our history is too important to be forgotten.
Because our future is too important not to know our past.
Because our kids are too important not to teach them about their authentic selves.
And because somewhere right now, there is a little girl watching an interview, hearing a name she doesn’t recognize, and feeling a spark she doesn’t yet have words for.
“I built this for her. I’m still building it for her. Because I know she’s out there. She was me.”
That’s why Black History Rocks exists. And that’s why I’m still here.