These Beautiful Instagram Accounts Will Teach You Something About Black History

By Josh Dyer

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In this op-ed, Josh Dyer (Director of Marketing, Myseum of Toronto) shares some of his favourite places to learn about and engage with Black and diverse histories on social media. 

Another Black History Month is upon us, and if you haven’t paid it much mind in the past, a few events over the course of 2020 may have spurred an interest in furthering your education and understanding of the history and achievements of Black folks. 

Knowing where to look can be a challenge, especially with the pandemic persisting and continuing to suspend in-person cultural events and exhibits. Not-to-mention, many of the museums, archives, and other institutions we’ve traditionally relied upon to document and share our collective histories often fail to account for the lives and accomplishments of marginalized groups. To this day, much of the Black history in Canada and abroad remains hidden, left out of textbooks and permanent museum collections. Luckily, we are living in the Information Age, affording us instant access to knowledge that was previously difficult or even impossible to find. The creative ways in which people are choosing to share these histories in the digital space are as entertaining as they are enlightening. 

There are some fantastic organizations and individuals that have dedicated themselves to filling this void, all while ushering in a new form of storytelling that brings history out of museum and gallery walls and directly to audiences online. Even as someone who works in the arts, culture, and heritage sector, I find myself discovering more new stories on social media than anywhere else. On Instagram, accounts such as @blackarchives.co and @brownhistory have leveraged the platform to curate crowdsourced histories from their respective diasporas, while on Tiktok young creators such as @taylorcassidyj are teaching history to hundreds of thousands of followers while still in high school.

So if you’ve only got a few minutes for some melanin-injected history lessons, here are a few accounts to check out this Black History Month, and beyond.

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