Black parents have long nurtured their daughters’ dreams through affirmation, advocacy, and culturally rooted care. Yet, little research has examined how Black parents’ hopes for Black girls reflect political imagination. Drawing on sociopolitical development and the Black radical tradition, this study explored how Black parents imagined more just futures for their daughters and for Black girls more broadly. Using Black storytelling and quilting as qualitative methodologies, we analyzed semi-structured interviews with 62 Black parents in the United States (39 mothers, 23 fathers; ages 22–67) and represented findings through poetic renderings. Four poems portrayed Black girls as deserving beauty and bodily autonomy, full humanity and voice, leadership and opportunity, and loving community care. Across themes, parents named structural harms shaping Black girls’ lives, including stereotypes, adultification, unequal recognition, and barriers to opportunity, while articulating expansive visions of safety, joy, dignity, and flourishing. These findings position Black parenting as a site of political imagination where storytelling, cultural memory, and communal care help Black girls interpret injustice and imagine lives beyond it.
Leath et al. (2026) studied this question.