Joshua Duran,  a Colorado State University political science student, played a key role in the ideation of this year’s Black History Month theme, “Black Destiny Month: Redesigning Our Future.”

In this video, he explains how he hopes that as future generations of learners and teachers share Black history, they spotlight key contributions from the community to instill confidence and inspiration to redesign their futures.

“When you’re always being told about the negative parts of your history, the negative parts of your ancestry, (with) slavery, Black trauma, Black struggle, it reaffirms the false thought that we are just that,” he said. “I feel like it’s very important for us to start to recognize that we are not our past. We are going to embrace our future.”