Passing the Baton: Spotlighting racial justice leaders in The Crisis Magazine

For the 110th Anniversary edition of The Crisis magazine, the official publication of the NAACP, we provided production grants to five members of the MFON collective to document rising activists in Portland, Louisville, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Kenosha.

The Year 2020 was a year of racial reckoning in America. The tragic deaths of Jacob Blake, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor set off worldwide protests in support of Black lives. In a historic partnership, the Magnum Foundation, which supports a global network of social justice and human rights-focused photographers, and The Crisis Magazine, the official publication of the NAACP, teamed up to document the nationwide civil unrest that occurred this summer.

Supported with production grants by the Magnum Foundation, five members of the MFON Black women photographers collective set out to capture the stories of rising activists in Portland, Louisville, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Kenosha. The contributing. photographers are Intisar Abioto, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Rosella Joseph, Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O’Neal, Andrea Ellen Reed, and Adama Delphine Fawundu (project co-producer). The profiles are featured in the December 2020 issue of The Crisis Magazine. The photos are a record of a changing of the guard, centering a new generation in the fight for social justice and civil rights that serve as a hopeful beacon for our future and mark an important juncture in our collective history.

The Crisis Magazine is the nation’s oldest continuously published African American publication. It was created in1910 by W.E.B. DuBois and focuses on social and political issues, African American history, Black art and culture.

MFON is dedicated to providing women and non-binary photographers of African descent with opportunities that will enhance their professional development and growth. In 2017, the anthology MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora was the first book to showcase a global perspective of women photographers of African descent.

Magnum Foundation is a nonprofit organization that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography, activating new ideas through the innovative use of images. Through grantmaking and fellowships, the Magnum Foundation supports a global network of social justice and human rights-focused photographers, and experiments with new models for storytelling.