Our Mission & Story

The 400 Frames story begins with the 400-year history of the degradation of Black images in American media. From the first newspaper published in America, our country constructed biased media frames to dehumanize Black and Indigenous peoples. Racism was maintained not only in law and practice but in the minds of all media consumers. For the Black community, our stories have been misrepresented, but many of our contextual stories of dignity and human depth are found missing from the historical timeline.

Video is a series of individual, sequential still pictures or frames that create seamless motion. You can't detect missing frames until you slow down to milliseconds. There has been significant progress in Black media, and with the collage of national media images, it may appear that Black stories are accurately represented. But if you zoom in close enough and slow everything down, you will find many of our authentic, everyday stories that accurately portray Black life and success are absent from the edit.

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We need more non-fiction, human stories of everyday Black inspiration, progress, success, and challenges. The mission is to create a new history of authentic Black stories, develop Black storytellers & journalists, and teach all people the craft and responsibility of storytelling using the right frames. 

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