I am visiting the Virtual Black History Museum inside Second Life created by Abrianna Oceanside. The building itself is a RARE gacha item, NOMAD // Museum // RARE, which I thought was pretty cool. The majority of the items on the walls seemed to focus on atrocities (such as lynching) and injustices perpetrated on African Americans for the last 300 years. It was all very sad and not really what I was expecting or at least not ALL I was expecting. It does have a memorial for Martin Luther poster along with a transcript of the famous, "I have a dream" speech, along with another man, Onesimus , who introduced inoculation to the US. Other than that,  I did not see the rich amazing African American historical leaders that are not often seen enough in History books and I try to talk about during this month. I really think the history lessons of this month should absolutely clearly state what happened that was cruel, unjust, and wrong, but also be about the incredible people of color that rose above their circumstances, broke barriers, and did AMAZING things! Such as: 

   

     I was looking through flickr and blogs of some of the talented POC SL residents and really wanted to compile a list of trending avatar components one would need to create a beautiful dark skinned avatar. I had a somewhat hard time finding credits that included things like skin and makeup. I did find a few, but usually, if credits were included, they did not contain those base parts. So I started to just curate a collection of some of my favorite African American avatars in SL and feature them and their amazing work below. In honor of Black History Month 2021, here are 17 of my personal favorites:

Picture by Katien Erin. This is my favorite, recent picture by Katien. The makeup, the colors, this is so vibrant and gorgeous. 

Check out this close up picture by Giselle: https://flic.kr/p/2k5kisV

Picture by Adonis Marceaux

Look at Zoey's gorgeous Family!!, Picture by ZoeyNova Oatsmill

And I know I was trying to just show one of my favorites from each stream, but I couldn't help myself with Zoey's. I loved the family picture and the Girl's Lunch both so much!

Picture by ZoeyNova Oatsmill

Photo by ByteDreams Slade. I love everything about this!

Picture by SonyV SL

Check this picture out: https://flic.kr/p/2kjwE3w, love the hair by FQ (fabrixquare)

Check out this hottie headshot of Vaughan: https://flic.kr/p/2keNXnQ

Picture by Malikai Onyx

Photo by Imani Keita

This picture made me smile because it shows realistic stretch marks and beautiful curves. Photo by Dina Delicioso. Unfortunately, she does not blog or post credits so we can see if you can buy these in SL either as a skin or added layer or if she just drew them on herself in photoshop. 

Picture by Verrity Voom

       So as I said, I started looking through some of the dark skin avatars that I admire for either their avatar, fashion, blog, photography or a combination of all of that to see what was trending in the way of avatar components needed for an African American avatar. That turned into what you see above with me just showing some of my favorite POC avatars and pictures.

      Here is what I did find in some of the above flickr credits or blogs as well as searching in SL. If you have other favorites or if you are one of the featured artists above and want to give us some more information about how you created your avatar, please comment on this blog post and I will add more to the list. 

Hair: 

       The main Second Life blog is also participating this month, "In honor of Black History Month, we will be exclusively featuring some of the POC Second Life influencers that promote our virtual world so beautifully. Every weekday throughout this month you can see the picture of the day, HERE." To be considered you have to submit your picture to the Official Second Life Flickr Group.