Guest-edited by Ta-Nehisi Coates, this special issue features the life of Breonna Taylor, as told by her mother; an oral history of the historic days after George Floyd's death; a portfolio of creatives and visionaries who capture the spirit—and urgency—of the moment; and much more.
Photo: media.vanityfair.com
Shortly after midnight March 13, strangers shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her own home. The strangers claimed to be investigating a drug case. The strangers found no drugs in Breonna Taylor’s home. The strangers left their incident report almost totally blank. Tamika Palmer is Breonna Taylor’s …
A photo portfolio celebrating the founders of Black Lives Matter, the Squad, John Boyega, Noname, Billy Porter, and more on the forefront of change.
A movement’s early days as told by those who rose up, those who bore witness, those who grieved, and those who hoped.
“Whiteness thrives in darkness,” Coates writes. “So it was with the slave narrative. So it is with the cell phone.” Last year Chicago poet Eve L. Ewing published 1919, a volume that channels her city’s Red Summer into blues. It is a magical work. The voices of house-keepers and stockyard hands are …
Vanity Fair takes you through an oral and visual recount of the first 14 days after the murder of George Floyd. From Minnesota politicians and friends of the victims to activists at the frontlines of the Black Lives Matter protests, rallies, and marches, we hear from pivotal voices who paint a …
The artist, who painted Michelle Obama, took care to draw on details from Taylor’s life. For more than 20 years, Amy Sherald has been putting the narratives of Black families and Black people to canvas. In 2016, she became the first woman and first African American to win the Outwin Boochever …
The scholar and activist has spent more than 50 years working for social justice. This summer, society started to catch up. AVA DuVERNAY: I was reading an interview in which you talked about something that’s been on my mind quite a bit lately. It’s about this time we are in that I’ll just call a …
To understand the citadel of law enforcement, we must reckon with its unions—which resemble fraternities more than labor unions. The man stands before them, head slightly bowed. He is gangly, awkward, against the backdrop of the officers’ firm march. They are hurried and he is not. Everything about …
The ESPN host digs into the controversy, according to coaches, experts, and athletes themselves. Robert F. Orr, a retired associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, has been a conservative his whole life. He realizes his politics might seem at odds with his vehement objection to the …
The author, on book tour when the pandemic set in, reflects on what could have been worse—and what could be better. DAY 1 22 Americans are dead from coronavirus, and Donald Trump tweets, “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.” I hear from …
Guyanese-British actor Letitia Wright, an Emmy nominee for Black Mirror and a standout in Marvel movies, on her own country’s complicated racial history. To hear Letitia Wright tell it, her role in Small Axe, the ambitious new miniseries helmed by 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen, owes a little …
What we talk about when we talk about addressing the savage roots of policing: justice and safety for everyone. Long before the internet caught wind of him, Henry Earl was already a local legend. By the time the Charleston Gazette dubbed him a “cult-status hero” and Newsweek called him the “town …
V.F.’s editor in chief introduces guest editor Ta-Nehisi Coates. In late May, when the protests were gaining momentum and the death toll from COVID-19 had surpassed 100,000 Americans, we asked Ta-Nehisi Coates to join us as guest editor for our September issue. This edition, one of the most …
The poet and writer on how activism creates art. I’m a little tickled by the mural on the boarded-up windows of Kitchen Window, a gourmet cooking store in Uptown, Minneapolis. I’m stuck giggling at the three MLK quotes talking back to me about peace and hope and silence. Uptown is maybe the first …
The 2019 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner on dressing Michelle Obama and fashion-industry racism. I love fabrics that play with light—anything iridescent or metallic or shiny; sequined—but anything that plays with light is associated with having money. Some of my white professors in art school saw my …
As the art world experiences renewed scrutiny, curators, administrators, and artists imagine templates for change. Black life—our joys and our oppression—has been embedded into American history since the first ship of enslaved Africans arrived in 1619. Now we’re seeing a seismic shift in how …
After Get Out, movies such as Antebellum, the upcoming Candyman retelling, and other tales of terror and the macabre are part of a cultural exorcism centuries in the making. Civil Rights leader Patricia Stephens Due adored scary stories, which baffled her family since she had experienced so many …
