Marley Dias

That's when she had an idea.

Marley Dias launched a campaign in November of that year called hashtag 1000 Black Girl Books.

The goal, as the hashtag suggests, was to collect 1000 books with Black female leads to donate to schools nationwide.

This would raise awareness of the amazing array of books that have Black female protagonists, and it would help bring those books to schools where young people would have access to far more diverse literature.

And books kind of show us that.

And then I think my experience in my campaign has really, I've always tried to at least open the door for other kids to be more imaginative in the ways they show up in the world.

And really, Marley Dias Gets It Done and So Can You is the toolkit that was specifically made for that, where so much of it is about kids.

not just activism, but my self-expression, my education, and just how I learned to move about the world.

It exposed how much some people had been counting on its absence.

Marley Dias was 10 years old when she noticed that Where the Red Fern Grows, a book about a white boy and his dogs, had been assigned to her in elementary school, and then assigned again to her friend in middle school in a completely different grade.

Her first thought? There are so many books in the world.

Why are we still doing this one? That's a question about power and who gets to decide which stories are worth telling.

So if you're thinking about Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou, Jacqueline Woodson, Octavia Butler, who are four of the most banned authors and all are Black women writing about Black girls, we have those books.

So if teachers and librarians need them, they are able to ask for those donations, and we're able to do school visits.

And also, with me being an author myself, I have the chance to use my book Marley Dias Gets It Done, or this new book coming out soon, or that'll be out-

Mm-hmm