My Black Resilience is My Superpower | Melissa Mitchell | TEDxCollierHeights
In her powerful and deeply personal TEDx talk, Melissa A. Mitchell explores the ancestral, cultural, and personal dimensions of Black resilience, framing it as an inherited and intentional superpower. Through vivid storytelling, she invites the audience to imagine persistent adversity—academic achievement met with rejection, career success shadowed by illness, personal tragedy layered on professional struggle—and to see how these experiences forge resilience rather than defeat.Melissa recounts her own birth as an act of survival and symbolism, drawing parallels between her journey and the broader African Diaspora experience. She unpacks how the erasure of African excellence from historical narratives distorts Black identity, emphasizing that resilience is not a new phenomenon but a birthright passed down through kings, queens, artists, inventors, and survivors.The talk traces Black resilience from ancient Kemet through slavery, the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement, and into the modern day—where Black creativity, innovation, and perseverance continue to redefine the world. Through inventions, art, education, and activism, Black communities have consistently responded to oppression with brilliance.For Melissa, art becomes both protest and purpose—her paintbrush a pulpit, her creativity a legacy tool. She positions herself as a modern griot, carrying the weight of those who came before her and using her talents to honor them. Ultimately, Mitchell asserts that Black resilience is not just a reaction to hardship—it is a divine inheritance and a creative force, making her and others who embrace it, truly unstoppable. Melissa A. Mitchell is self-taught artist, entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she has a love for vibrant colors, unique shapes, and bold dark lines that she attributes to her Bahamian heritage, melodic sounds and the colorful world around her.In 2014, she founded Abeille Creations. Melissa has gone on to create over 500 original art pieces, 40 larger than life murals and been featured in Forbes, Vogue, ESSENCE, SHEEN Magazine, Rolling Out Magazine and The Huffington Post, among others. Most notably, she is known for turning her lively artwork into textiles, specifically head wraps named after influential women in her life, seen on the likes of Lupita Nyong’o, Amara La Negra, Yandy Smith, Karen Civil, Rebecca Gross. The author of, Views from My Kaleidoscope.Melissa,has partnered with two billion dollar brands—the recent winner of Spanx’s Illuminate-Her contest with her Bra-llelujah Bralette and Under Statements Thong collection. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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