Resistance Wears Many Faces

Too often, when people talk about resistance, they point only to one image: bodies in the streets.  Specifically Black people in the streets. Only.

Signs lifted high. Voices chanting in unison. And yes—protest in the streets has its place in history. But for Black people, that narrow vision of resistance has always been dangerous. We are too often pushed into arenas where harm is certain, where violence waits, where our bodies are treated as expendable symbols instead of sacred lives.

Satisfying a habitual lust for blood. 

Our brilliant ancestors were never one-dimensional. They knew that survival required creativity, intelligence, and endless strategies. They resisted in classrooms and pulpits, on stages and in kitchens, through songs and coded quilts, through gardens and safe houses, through laughter, prayer, and art.

Black people have always found ways to live free—even when shackled, surveilled, and silenced. Our resistance is not limited to what cameras can capture or headlines can sensationalize. It is written into our stories, braided in our hair, stitched into our quilts, carried in our songs, whispered to our children, and embodied in the very fact that we are still here.

Let no one drag us into the narrow script that says protest is only visible if it happens in the streets. Our resistance is vast. Our survival is victory. Our creativity is protest. And our lives—whole, safe, and thriving—are the ultimate refusal to be broken.

Protest in the streets is powerful, but history shows us that resistance has always taken many forms—especially for those who could not safely gather or march. Here’s a wide-ranging list of ways people have resisted oppression, injustice, and erasure:

🎭 Arts & Culture

• Theater & Performance: Plays, skits, and monologues exposing injustice (e.g., Harlem Renaissance plays, Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed). Community theater has always been an integral part of Black American life and living. Did you know that Samuel L. Jackson and Latonya Richardson Jackson got their start there? As did many, many other Black American actors and actresses.

• Music & Song: Spirituals, jazz, hip hop, folk, gospel, and protest anthems carrying coded messages of survival and hope.

• Dance: Choreography as embodied resistance and celebration of identity (e.g., Alvin Ailey’s Revelations).

• Visual Art: Murals, posters, quilts, and graffiti that tell truths and claim space.

• Literature & Poetry: Novels, poems, and essays (Hurston, Baldwin, Morrison, Hughes, Angelou).

• Fashion & Style: Wearing natural hair, cultural dress, or resistance symbols to affirm identity and defy assimilation.

📚 Knowledge & Storytelling

• Underground Newspapers & Zines: Spreading suppressed news and radical thought.

• Memoirs & Testimonies: Bearing witness when society wants silence.

• Oral Tradition: Passing down stories, folktales, and hidden knowledge.

• Archiving & Preserving History: Collecting evidence, keeping names and events alive when institutions ignore them.

🛠 Everyday Acts of Defiance

• Economic Resistance: Boycotts, strikes, mutual aid societies, collective buying power.

• Refusal & Noncooperation: Quietly refusing unjust rules, disrupting systems by withholding labor or consent.

• Sanctuary & Hiding: Sheltering the hunted, protecting the vulnerable (Underground Railroad, the Green Book, safe houses).

• Everyday Dignity: Refusing to shrink, to bow, to apologize for existing.

🌱 Community-Building & Healing

• Creating Schools & Learning Circles: Teaching when education is denied.

• Building Independent Institutions: Churches, clubs, and organizations that nurtured power when mainstream institutions excluded.

• Food & Land Work: Community gardens, collective farming, and cooking traditions as survival.

• Spiritual Resistance: Prayer circles, rituals, ancestor veneration, faith practices that defied oppression.

🌍 Digital & Global Resistance

• Social Media Storytelling: Hashtags and viral campaigns exposing truth.

• Digital Archiving: Preserving erased or endangered histories online.

• Artivism & Film: Documentaries, digital art, and independent media reaching global audiences.

🔥 Subtle but Powerful Acts

• Humor & Satire: Comedy as a way to ridicule power and speak what can’t be said openly.

• Code Language: Hidden messages in songs, quilts, or speech (e.g., freedom codes in spirituals).

• Everyday Survival: Simply living fully in a world designed to erase you is its own form of resistance.

✨ Resistance is not one-size-fits-all. It is marches, yes—but also music, kitchens, inventions, classrooms, bedrooms, pulpits, quilts, jokes, dancing, love, and whispered stories in the dark.

NEVER forget, the people who care about you, will celebrate your survival.

Honor that you are here to dance, love, and thrive today. 

 Your Safety Is Sacred. Your Wellness Is Non-Negotiable.