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- Beyond Black History Month
Beyond Black History Month
Kinfolk Tech Foundation
February 12, 2025
We back! We’re returning to our newsletter to celebrate the archive, share our latest projects, and envisioning our collective futures. For this issue, we’re celebrating Black history and futures, but we know our stories and the work continues beyond Black History Month. Expect monthly newsletters For Kinfolk, By Kinfolk as a portal to our histories to never be forgotten.
 | Starting February off right, Kinfolk has been featured as the App of the Day on the Apple App Store! We're honored to be recognized for our work bringing undertold narratives to life and weaving Black history into our collective future. |
Altar to Our Ancestors
Honoring those who came before us
“The will to adorn is the second most notable characteristic in Negro expression. Perhaps his idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional standards,
but it satisfies the soul of its creator.”
In her 1934 essay "Characteristics of Negro Expression," anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston makes clear the originality and beauty of Black expression through fashion, storytelling, dance, and so on.
🔎 Explore Zora in the Kinfolk App. Tap in to the Kinfolk App to bring a part of her world into your home. Download Kinfolk here!
📖 Read Characteristics of Negro Expression here.
For Kinfolk, By Kinfolk
A glimpse into our current projects and collaborations
 Marsha P. Johnson |  Octavia Butler |  Sun Ra |
In Honor of Black History/Futures Month, we’re highlighting a select few inspiring figures who embody what it means to envision new collective worlds beyond the limits of our current moment.
Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992)
As part of a partnership with the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center in Greenwich Village, experience our monument to Marsha P. Johnson. The Center is the site of the Stonewall Inn and the resistance that took place against harm and policing, that charged the LGBTQIA+ movement forward on June 28, 1969. Born on August 24, 1945 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Johnson was a transgender woman and rights activist who was crucial to the Stonewall Rebellion and the movement that followed.
She, alongside fellow activist Sylvia Rivera, established S.T.A.R. — Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The group was committed to helping unhoused transgender youth in New York City. Johnson’s presence challenged who the gay liberation movement recognized as worthy of inclusion. When she and Rivera were banned from participating in the gay pride parade in 1973 by the gay and lesbian committee, they defiantly marched ahead of the parade.
📍 Go to the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center to experience Marsha P. Johnson’s monumental presence in the Kinfolk App.
Octavia Butler (1947-2006)
Born in Pasadena, California on June 22, 1947, Octavia Butler published her first novel, Patternmaster, in 1976. This was the first book in her highly regarded Patternist series, followed by Kindred, a novel exploring slavery in the U.S. through time travel. Her narratives tackled complex social, cultural, and political issues through the themes of racial violence, gender identity, and climate destruction — all concerns plaguing our world today. Through her writing she helped push beyond the limits set for science fiction.
In one of her most prolific works, Parable of the Sower, set in 2024, a person of great strength now governs the U.S., the planet is under attack from climate change at an alarming rate, our economy has crumbled into ruins due to wealth inequality. Butler offered a dystopian warning then by observing the current state of the world, that is heard loud and clear now. However, through the novels protagonist Butler challenges the inevitability of our circumstances. While warning us, her work also requests our participation; urging us to harness our capacity for transformation.
Sun Ra (1914-1993)
A jazz composer, bandleader, and philosopher, Sun Ra created some of the most innovative and groundbreaking music of the 20th century. Known for his visionary approach to jazz and highly theatrical live performances, incorporating science fiction, Egyptian philosophy, and Astro Black Mythology, Sun Ra was born (or rather, “arrived on earth”) on May 22, 1014. Some would consider him the founder of “Afrofuturism.” Sun Ra claimed to be from Saturn in a metaphorical sense to introduce a discourse about otherness. His songs and album titles were infused with space and science fiction terminology, and he play on futuristic intruments like the “Minimoog” synthesizer and the “Outer Space Visual Communicator.” The 1974 film Space is the Place, written by Sun Ra, captures his vision for Black power, spiritual transcendence, and enlightenment.
Read more about each of these Black pioneers in the Kinfolk app.
Dreaming Out Loud
Pathways to new worlds
 | Our friends at The Black School are building a schoolhouse, drawing from the history of the Washington Rosenwald Schools to provide arts education and a center for community. |
 | Dismantling the Master’s Clock by Rasheedah Philliips interrogates our dominant Western perception of time and to remember Black and Afrodiasporic conceptions of time. Experience the Black Quantum Physics monument in the Kinfolk app. |
 | Explore alternative realities with the Warpmode deck by Black Beyond. Watch how to play in this live twitch stream with creator Jazsalyn in play with artists Tamar Clarke-Brown and Salome Asega |
 | Dreaming of “An Internet for Our Elders” with Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). Read more about how our elders have long served as “technologies of memory.” |
 | Want to help inform the future of Kinfolk? Fill out our Kinfolk interest form to be a part of our research group, which will help us build the best possible solution! |
Stay Connected
📲 Download the Kinfolk App → Explore our AR archive
💲 Donate to Kinfolk Tech Foundation → Help expand Kinfolk’s narrative offerings
Until next time,
ravon, idris, and the Kinfolk team