Black History Month, the time set aside to recognize the contributions of Black Americans to the nation’s story and the challenges we have faced, comes at a challenging time this year. With efforts growing to suppress Black voting and civil rights and laws erasing Black stories from classrooms and public discussions, Black history and Black people are both under attack. While recognizing the past contributions of previous generations of Black Americans, it is equally important to highlight the people who are making Black history today. Here are six changemakers currently making Black history.

1. Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett created the COVID-19 vaccine.

Not many people can say they saved the world, but Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett has a strong claim to have done just that. As a researcher in the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Health since 2014, Corbett’s research on coronavirus and mRNA suddenly became relevant once the COVID-19 pandemic started. Corbett spearheaded the research that led to the Moderna COVID vaccine, which has now been administered over 7 billion times worldwide. She has received numerous honors for her work, including being named Federal Employee of the Year in 2021. Time magazine lauded her as one of its “heroes of the year.”

In June, Corbett joined the faculty of Harvard University as an assistant professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer assistant professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Her job at Harvard includes running the school’s new Coronaviruses & Other Relevant Emerging Infectious Diseases (CoreID) Lab. Corbett is also working to fight against vaccine hesitancy — or “vaccine inquisitiveness,” as she calls it — in the Black community.

2. Amariyanna Copeny worked to save Flint (and may have launched her presidential campaign).

In 2016, when she was only 8 years old, Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny wrote a letter to then-President Barack Obama requesting to meet with him or First Lady Michelle Obama. Copeny was not simply seeking a friendly visit; rather, she wanted to personally talk to the Obamas about the water crisis in her hometown of Flint, Mich. Two years earlier, city administrators had switched the city’s water supply to a cheaper but unsafe source, leading to multiple deaths, dozens of severe illnesses and thousands of children facing long-term developmental challenges. By writing the Obamas, Copeny hoped to bring greater attention and response to the crisis that was impacting children like herself.

President Obama responded, coming to Flint personally and meeting Copeny — who wore a “Little Miss Flint” sash, which became her nickname — in a moment that went viral. Obama later increased federal aid to Flint to $100 million to fix the city’s water supply. Copeny, meanwhile, launched a young career in activism and public service. She’s helped to organize large-scale giveaways of water to Flint residents and backpacks to the city’s children, as well as free movie screenings for films like Black Panther. Having done so much as a child, Copeny plans even bigger things in the future, including following Obama to the White House. “I want to be President when I grow up,” she wrote on Twitter in 2018. “But until then I will fight for #FlintKids.”

3. Kahlil Greene, the Gen Z Historian who made his own history at Yale.

Online, Kahlil Greene is “the Gen Z Historian” and has established himself as a young expert on Black history. Amassing hundreds of thousands of followers on platforms such as Tik Tok and Instagram, Greene entertains and informs his broad audience on topics from the origins of Juneteenth to the more militant words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the recent history of white content creators stealing from Black creators and culture on social media.

In real life, Greene has already made history of his own. As Blavity previously reported, Greene was elected President of the Yale College Council in 2019, becoming the first Black person ever to lead the historic university’s student body. For Greene, his online presence and his leadership at Yale have all been part of a larger mission to mobilize young people to tackle the racial divides that have plagued the country since its very beginnings. As Greene wrote in an op-ed for Blavity, he’s putting the onus on himself and his generation to close this nation’s promise gap.

4. Bryan Stevenson is saving lives today and highlighting lives lost in our nation’s past.

Lawyer, activist and law professor Bryan Stevenson had a moment of fame when his 2014 memoir, Just Mercy, was converted to a film starring Michael B. Jordan as Stevenson. The book and movie tell the story of Stevenson’s work as founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. According to the organization’s website, the group “represent[s] people who have been sentenced to death and have won relief for over 130 people.”

In addition to his work with death row inmates, Stevenson has used his prominence to advocate for racial justice more generally. Stevenson has also spearheaded the establishment of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., to memorialize the thousands of victims of lynching and racial violence in the deep south and throughout the nation. He recently spoke in front of President Joe Biden and members of Congress at the National Prayer Breakfast to discuss the country’s racist history and call for justice in the present. “We cannot do justice if we are unwilling to go to the places where cruelty and oppression are manifest, where abuse of power is manifest, where suffering is manifest,” Stevenson told the assembled elected officials.

5. LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright helped flip the Senate and fight for voting rights.

In 2017, Alabama voters shocked the nation by electing Democratic candidate Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate over his heavily favored Republican challenger, Roy Moore. The surprising result in a deeply red state was largely driven by Black voters who came out in force to back Jones. Three years later, another red state, Georgia, turned blue, voting for Joe Biden for president and electing Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the Senate. Again, Black voters made a huge difference in these races.

These victories were largely driven by voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns led by organizations like Black Voters Matter, the group founded by LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright in 2016. More recently, Brown and Albright have been on the frontlines in the fight for voting rights. Both activists have been organizing in battleground states like Georgia where restrictive voting laws are being implemented, appearing in public forums to advocate for voting rights legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and even getting arrested in Washington, D.C., for protesting against voter suppression. With the state of voting rights direr than it has been in some time, Albright and Brown show no signs of slowing down.

Albright, Brown and all the individuals profiled here continue to shine a light on racism in America’s history, fight injustice in the present and improve the lives of people across the country and around the globe. In the process, they are honoring the legacy of Black achievement and leadership in the nation while making their own Black history.

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