Nia in Two Acts
A year after her murder, reflecting on Nia Wilson reveals the ways black girls struggle against erasure while also reveling in opacity
Leigh Raiford
Leigh Raiford is an associate professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches and researches about race, justice, and visuality. Raiford is the author of Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), and is coeditor with Heike Raphael-Hernandez of Migrating the Black Body: Visual Culture and the African Diaspora (University of Washington Press, 2017) and with Renee Romano of The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (University of Georgia Press, 2006). Raiford’s work has appeared in both academic journals and popular venues, including American Quarterly, Aperture, Artforum, the Atlantic.com, Ms. Magazine, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and Small Axe. She has written catalogue essays about artists Dawoud Bey, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Lava Thomas, and Wendel White.