Blair Imani

About Blair Imani

Blair Imani (born Blair Elizabeth Brown on October 31, 1993) grew up in San Marino, California, and graduated from San Marino High School in 2012. She earned a degree in history from Louisiana State University in 2015, where she also founded Equality for HER, a nonprofit providing resources and community for women and nonbinary people. After graduating, she worked as a Press Officer for Planned Parenthood Action Fund and as Civic Action & Campaign Lead at DoSomething.

In 2016, Imani became nationally known when she was arrested while peacefully protesting the police shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. She described being trampled by SWAT officers and having her hijab removed during detention. Less than a week after her arrest, she helped organize a vigil in honor of three police officers killed in Baton Rouge, publicly stating her opposition to all violence. She later settled a lawsuit over her unlawful arrest.

Imani converted to Islam from Christianity in 2015, drawn to the faith while seeking community during the Black Lives Matter protests following the 2015 Chapel Hill shooting. She changed her surname to Imani, a Swahili and Arabic word meaning faith. She came out publicly as queer in 2017 on live television, responding to Tucker Carlson mid-interview, and has since been an advocate for queer Muslim visibility.

Her Work

Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History (2018), illustrated by Monique Le and published by Ten Speed Press, profiles seventy overlooked activists, artists, and organizers — spanning the Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall, the AIDS crisis, Standing Rock, and Black Lives Matter. The book centers people of color, queer and trans people, disabled people, and others whose contributions to social change have been minimized in mainstream historical narratives.

Her second book, Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream (2020), illustrated by Rachelle Baker, explores the Great Migration as both history and lived legacy. Her third, Read This to Get Smarter about Race, Class, Gender, Disability & More (2021), is an accessible guide to intersecting forms of identity and oppression aimed at general readers.

Since 2020, Imani has hosted Smarter in Seconds, a series of short educational videos on Instagram and TikTok covering topics including consent, discrimination, and environmental justice. The series has earned her a following of millions and established her as one of the most recognizable public educators working in social media.

Book Challenges

Modern HERstory has been challenged and removed from school libraries primarily for its inclusion of LGBTQ+ figures, including transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, and its matter-of-fact treatment of queer identity as a positive historical force. Challenges have framed the book as promoting an agenda rather than presenting history — a distinction that Imani and her defenders reject, arguing that recovering erased narratives is the work of honest history, not advocacy.