Vashti Harrison is a Brooklyn-based artist and filmmaker who has taken our breaths away with her illustrations. When she's not reimagining Tinker Bell as a woman of color, she's drawing Blue Ivy Carter on her 5th birthday holding a pink purse and with flowers in her hair. Or speaking for all of us in a farewell drawing to President Obama. She hashtags a lot of her drawings #BlackGirlMagic, which sums them up pretty perfectly.
Today, on the first day of Women's History Month, she posted a Flipagram of drawings that feature history-changing Black women stylized as characters in her "Little Ladies" series — and we can't stop watching it. The illustrations, which celebrate the achievements of Black women, were created for Black History Month.
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"The Little Ladies are a set of 'every-girl' characters I created to model and celebrate different styles, looks, costumes, and historical figures. With my #bhm and #whm posts, I want a girl to see them and be able to think, I could be any one of them!" Harrison tells Refinery29.
The women featured include Sojourner Truth ("probably the first recorded intersectional feminist"); Ida B. Wells (who led an anti-lynching campaign all the way to the White House), Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress; author Zora Neale Hurston; poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde; ballet dancer Misty Copeland; and more. On her Instagram, Harrison captions each illustration with a little bit of history.
Harrison is currently illustrating a book for Simon & Schuster, and we hope she keeps inspiring little girls everywhere with her work. She's also working on some new "Little Ladies" for Women's History Month, so don't miss those!