Rainbow is Enuf is a digital archive documenting the remarkable tenacity of black women, trans women, and femmes’ visual, cultural, and political influence on American history. This black joy and black excellence archive draws on and contributes to digital black studies, digital queer studies, and digital feminist studies. Currently, in public and independent American schools, children learn about black American life by studying enslavement, the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Jim Crow Laws, redlining/blockbusting of housing, and most recently, the prison industrial complex. To offer students an opportunity to understand the complexities of these histories more completely, our project combines digital research and digital production that allows students to explore the joy and excellence of black labor and resistance through the study of music, film, dance, art, comedy, theatre, and food.

 

The historiography of the project highlights and centers contributions of black women as creators of knowledge. By presenting students with new information using primary sources and giving voice and volume to marginalized histories, we seek to decolonize U.S. History curricula. Our contribution to digital humanities in general and to the arts, Africana and diasporic studies, and social justice research, in particular, is a digital archive that is free, unrestricted, and open access, for use by researchers, teachers, students, writers, curators, community organizers, and activists from around the world who are dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of U.S. culture and history in a global context.

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"Familial practice for caring for Black children, those babies --- our babies --- who this nation hates

even more than Black adults.

Inundate them with Black genius, love, and beauty in every conceivable form.

Create a spiritual force field out of our tradition.

Make every sense conspire to refute the myth of inferiority.

Ignite their imaginations alongside their ethics.

Tell them "I love you" so much that their eyes roll in embarrassment."

~ Imani Perry