by Michelle Brooks | staff writer
To celebrate the Black History Month , four junior girls have organized a way for black girls at Johnson to get in formation.
“It is an empowerment of young black girls and other girls who are mixed with black and we are coming together as one and supporting each other and having little cute dress days, where we dress up as a certain era or theme,” junior Maria Cauraugh said.
Taylor Anthony, Kemiah Owoh, Edel Wambui, and Brianna Adams have created a group chat called Black Girl Magic to put out information about the different theme days the black girls will do every Friday in February.
“The Black Girl Magic theme days are like ‘Black Out,’ where you dress up in all black and then, there’s bonnet day [which is the third Friday], where we represent how we keep our hair nice and looking all cute,” Anthony said. ”The second one is where we have a 90’s theme and we dress up like the 90’s, like overalls, huge clothes, ‘Timbs.’Just like what the black culture wears. And then the last one is we make t-shirts and they have ‘My Black is Beautiful’ and we’re all gonna wear them on the last Friday of February.”
The whole purpose of the group chat and theme days is not solely to celebrate Black History Month but to bring all the black girls at Johnson together to embrace their culture.
“We chose to do this because we thought it’d be a fun way to get everybody together and bring people closer to one another and celebrate where we all come from,” Owoh said. “And even though we’re all different, it’s still something we should all celebrate together.”
All the girls enjoy participating in the theme days, meeting new people, and potentially helping other people show pride in their culture.
“It affects us very widely and it is making a statement that we have unity in our culture, that we will always come together, and our harmony that we have. It’s also being able to meet new people,” Cauraugh said. “I didn’t even know there was that many black girls here. At first, I kinda felt alone but now that we’re doing this, I see that there’s more and we’re also like helping other people, I feel, in a way. Like, ‘ hey let’s do something cute like that too’ for Hispanic History Month. Maybe they’re gonna do that too. You never know.”
Hence the name ‘Black Girl Magic’, the creators have made the group chat only for girls due to their doubt of participation of the boys.
“We didn’t include the black boys because we feel like they wouldn’t partake in it or be involved in it as much as the girls would because the boys are just doing their own thing,” Anthony said.
Many feel that only including girls will help give credit to the black girl community, which many feel are underrated.
“Well, I feel we kinda forgot to tell them because I feel like they already get a lot of recognition and the black girl community doesn’t as much. So, I also feel like it’s nice but at the same time, we should’ve included them. But next year,” Cauraugh said.
The girls have heard nothing but positivity and support for their demonstration of black girl magic for their one and only month.
“I feel like some people kinda look at us weird but I feel like once they know what we’re doing, it’s not gonna matter. Everyone’s pretty supportive around here,” Cauraugh said. “If it does affect somebody, I don’t really see why because we’re just showing our unity and we’re just showing pride because it is our month, Black History Month.”
