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With a combined platform of more than 500,000 followers across Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn, Kahlil Greene, the self-described “Gen-Z Historian,” knows how to address an audience.

He put those skills to work on Tuesday evening during his virtual Leaders in Communications webinar, hosted by the Newhouse School of Public Communications. Greene, a senior at Yale University, joined Newhouse’s Melissa Chessher — the chair of the Magazine, News and Digital Journalism Department — for a conversation about Greene’s work as a full-time public educator and student. He started the talk by encouraging students to ask any questions they may have, as his work revolves around questions.

“If there’s a question that I could potentially get asked, or if there’s something that I think is an interesting topic that people aren’t exploring in the way that I see it, I make a video about it,” Greene said.

He said his advocacy journey was ignited at the age of 19, when he was elected as Yale’s first Black student body president in the school’s 318-year-history. He served as president for the 2019-20 school year and enacted critical changes on the school’s campus, such as raising over $57,000 for racial justice organizations in just one week.

Since his term as president ended, Greene has earned a Hall of Fame designation from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, written op-eds for the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and become a Kerry Fellow (named after former Secretary of State John Kerry). Most recently, he’s turned to TikTok and other forms of social media as the objects of his advocacy efforts.

“The first TikTok I made was on MLK Day,” Greene said. “(The video) was talking about how all the MLK quotes you see are very pacifistic and pro-peace, but they always erase, at least from mainstream conversation, the MLK quotes that are more radical.”

In his TikTok, Greene highlighted “non-whitewashed MLK quotes,” and the video has since racked up over 1.4 million views. He said he was surprised to see the video had gone viral that day, and he continued making videos. He started with MLK-related videos and moved to exploring “hidden history” — the “creepy, crazy, and/or covered up parts of American History” — until settling on more contemporary topics.

Greene’s trajectory on the app has covered a broad expanse of issues pertaining to Black history and social justice. One of his most successful series on TikTok has been “How Everything on This App Originated with Black People,” which Greene explained as his root cause for joining the platform, although he was originally skeptical of the app.

“That’s really what I wanted someone to say to a large audience, ‘Literally everything on TikTok came from Black people,’” Greene said. “Because there was a drought of people saying that … I felt the need to do so.”

Greene now intends to become a public educator full time after graduating in December. Specifically, he wants to build his content into political commentary coming into the 2022 midterm elections.

Greene said he has spotted an absence of historical corroboration to modern policies in political commentary and wants to use his knowledge to bring that information to light in the upcoming midterms.

His success on TikTok and social media in general has inspired this career choice, and Greene said he’s grateful for the opportunity to be pursuing his passion. He noted that, without his success online, he would likely fall into the pattern of pursuing a job for financial stability rather than passion, which he said he noticed many of his peers doing.

The Yale senior is also appreciative of his ability to garner a public platform from his bedroom, saying that Black public educators in history have not had access to an audience as easily.

“I wanted to get into this public education, public commentary space because there was a drought of arguments I wanted to see people making,” Greene said. “I want to be in this space where I’m able to comment on (politics) and share my opinions, share my thoughts.”

As part of his talk, Greene also answered comments from audience members, supplying answers about his work and processes. When asked what advice he would give to aspiring advocates and social justice educators, Greene emphasized the importance of debate skills. He cited his experience learning the basics of logical argument and credited those skills to giving him the confidence needed to carry out his work online.

The guest speaker ended the night by sharing his Instagram handle and hinting at plans to expand his brand through the creation of a newsletter. Though he’s growing tired of the restrictions placed on creators on TikTok, such as the app taking down some of his videos, Greene is confident in the need for his work.

“The history that I’m teaching is stuff that people, at least in the Black community, have often either shared orally or known,” Greene said. “The information itself has existed for a long time, but I think the key is that it’s becoming mainstream now.”

Published on October 6, 2021 at 12:48 am