Entry · catalog no. 1165
Black Girl Magic
/ /blæk ɡɜːrl ˈmædʒɪk/ /blak GURL MAJ-ik
phrase · Washington, DC; spread nationwide through Black Twitter, then through Essence, BET and national press · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
An affirmation used by and about Black women and girls, holding that their beauty, competence, nerve and stamina are self-evident rather than exceptional. The phrase works less as a compliment than as a correction — it answers a century of American media that rendered Black women invisible, unserious, or interchangeable. In daily speech it marks a particular accomplishment (a degree defended, a race won, a room commanded, a hairstyle landed) and files it under shared inheritance instead of individual fluke. It travels as a hashtag, a caption, a T-shirt, a toast, and a greeting between strangers who recognize one another on sight.
“She defended her dissertation on Friday and closed on the house Monday — that is Black Girl Magic right there.”
2.
Used attributively as a programming, publishing and marketing category: a branded slot in which institutions package Black women achievement for audiences. Carried in this sense by magazines, award shows, brand campaigns and corporate Black History Month calendars. Many Black women use the phrase in this second sense with visible irony, since the commercial version tends to arrive without the women who built it.
“Every February some brand rolls out a Black Girl Magic campaign and can t name one of us by March.”
Origin & Attribution
The phrase in its current form belongs to CaShawn Thompson, a Black woman from Washington, DC — a preschool teacher and heavy Twitter user — who began posting Black Girls Are Magic in 2013 and shortened it to the hashtag. She has said plainly that her contribution was not the words but the aim: earlier uses attached magic to Black women hair, and she was the first to attach it to Black women whole standing. Her January 2014 T-shirt run is what carried it beyond her circle. Two corrections matter. First, the phrase has an older print ancestor: Joan Morgan 1999 book When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost contains the line the fierceness of a black girl magic. Second, and more consequential, mainstream credit drifted away from Thompson almost immediately. Beverly Bond filed a service-mark application for the phrase in August 2014; Essence branded its February 2016 issue with it and later filed its own application; Thompson 2016 application lapsed when she could not afford counsel. She has said publicly that she was erased from a movement she started. The DMV and Black Twitter were the carriers; the magazines were the beneficiaries.
1999
Joan Morgan publishes When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, containing the line the fierceness of a black girl magic
2013
CaShawn Thompson begins posting Black Girls Are Magic on Twitter; the hashtag shortens to BlackGirlMagic
2016
Essence devotes its February issue to Black Girl Magic; competing trademark filings by Beverly Bond, Essence and Thompson herself set off a public fight over ownership
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Washington, DC; spread nationwide through Black Twitter, then through Essence, BET and national press · 2010s
Spoken by
Black women and girls of all ages; Black women organizations, sororities, HBCU communities and educators; secondarily by brands and media addressing them
$BLACKGThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring13 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
86/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2013
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost (Simon & Schuster, 1999)
book · printed
■
Clover Hope, "Who Gets to Own Black Girl Magic?," Jezebel, 7 April 2017
news · reported
■
Feminista Jones, "For CaShawn Thompson, Black Girl Magic Was Always the Truth," Beacon Broadside, 8 February 2019
interview · published
■
Dexter Thomas, "Why everyone is saying Black Girls Are Magic," Los Angeles Times, September 2015
news · reported
■
+ Cite a sourceQrescent Mali Mason, "#BlackGirlMagic as Resistant Imaginary," Hypatia 36(4), 2021
journal · peer-reviewed
See also