Posted by | Ray Cornelius
Three-time Grammy Award and Academy Award winning artist, actor and social justice activist, Common and TV One are celebrating Black History Month with a series of vignettes that embody the theme, Represent the Dream.
According to the press release, the hip hop star will discusses a variety of topics related to Black history and issues affecting the African American community: racism and how we can become a better nation; activism, the power of using “our voice” and movements like Black Lives Matter; self-awareness, his heroes and what representing the dream means today, 55 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
The campaign will also also profile Common’s story and journey as an activist, exploring where this passion was born and how it was fueled by his music. It will also transition to present day and reveal why Common has stepped even more into the spotlight to fight injustices that affect the Black community.
“What drove me to want to be an activist was a conversation with Ambassador Andrew Young, who was, obviously, a very strong figure of the civil rights movement,” said Common in an interview for the profile. “We were sitting around a table at a rehearsal for Selma listening to him and his experiences. We all were in awe of him. He posed the question, ‘What are you willing to die for? Live for that.’ He said, ‘This is what our mentality for the civil rights movement was. We were willing to die for freedom. We were willing to die for equality. We were willing to die for justice, so we lived for it every day.’ When he said that to me it struck me.”
Check out one of his first videos below:
Photo Credit: YouTube.com/TV One
