iphop manifested during the Black Power Era.Black Studies scholars assert that Hiphop pedagogy is useful when locating Black diaspora movement for liberation (Saucier &Woods).Hiphop is inextricably bound to Black Lives Matter (BLM) era of the freedom struggle.The Black Lives Matter Hiphop generation is shaping freedom in their own terms, sounds, and likeness (Cohen).Begun by Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Khan Cullors in 2013 as a hashtag after the vigilante murder of Trayvon Martin, these loving and powerful Black queer women started a movement, emphasizing the sanctity of all Black life, prioritizing the most marginalized ones.The global Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement provides synergy for Hiphop [and others] to develop coherent political frameworks to demand long overdue justice.However, some artists such as Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Waka Flocka Flame, 50 Cent, and others, appeared to be going down on the wrong side of history in their support of Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential campaign.These rappers backed Trump, despite his support of white supremacist groups, confederate monuments, police brutality, anti-Black Lives Matter tactics, failures around Covid-19, which cost disproportionate loss of Black and Brown lives, and backlash against the first Black president-Barack Obama.(McGrady) Hiphop and Trump make for strange bedfellows.We see these artists as wasting their clout on Trump.Barack Obama called upon Jay-Z to support his campaign and the rest is history.

This work draws upon Hiphop feminism, studies of Black girlhood, and Black women and girls' literacies to illuminate the layered and violent narratives that shape society's treatment of Black women and girls, what these narratives look like in everyday life, how they are taken up and negotiated in different social spheres, such as an afterschool club for Black middle school girls and the platforms and artistry of women Hiphop artists and creatives. Richardson considers what activism is possible through juxtaposing Black girls as emerging creatives, celebrity corporate artist activists Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, independent activist artists such as Noname and dream hampton. Given the far-reaching representations of Black women and girls in popular culture, the art, lives and platforms of women in Hiphop are critical sites to understanding complexities, strategies and possibilities for social change.

This paper examines the language, literacies, communicative, and rhetorical practices of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The work pays attention to the communication practices of the BLM and Hip Hop generation in its extension of Black and African American language traditions and prior liberation movements in their unapologetic performance of Black chants, Black grammar, phonology, vocabulary, Black fashion and music, to die-ins, hands-up, and the technologization of the movement through social media, Black Twitter, hashtags, and memes. The language and literacies of the Black Lives Matter movement represent diverse identities within Black community, vernacular associated with various economic and educational classes, diaspora, culturally rooted, Hip Hop generations, cis-gendered women, men, as well as LGBTQ and gender non-conforming. In this way, the language and literacies of BLM promote the value of ALL Black lives.

This chapter seeks to add to our understanding of literacy as it relates to African Americans, with a focus on African American female literacies. Primarily, I argue that mother tongue literacy is central to literacy education.

... No matter how backward and negative the mainstream view and image of Black people, Ifeel compelled to reshape the image and to explore our manypositive angles because I love my own people. Perhaps this is because I have been blessed with spiritual African eyes at a time when most Africans have had their eyes poked out.... So, like most ghetto girls who haven't yet been turned into money-hungry heartless bitches by a godless money centered world, I have a problem: I love hard. Maybe too hard. Or maybe its too hard for a people without structure-structure in the sense of knowing what African womanhood is. What does it mean? What is it supposed to do to you andfor you? -Sister Souljah