Black studies is a rapidly advancing discipline and it has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 50-plus years. The National Council of Black Studies is continuing to stoke that fire and fan the flames to incite greater relationships between academic excellence and social responsibility. To further facilitate this relationship NCBS is launching an annual report. The report aims to include short essays on new, emerging, and ongoing current issues and innovations of importance to Africana communities in the United States and throughout the global African world. Our mission is to create a space for our discipline to offer historical context, future projections, solutions, and culturally aligned analyses of current needs, concerns, innovations, and ideas of people of African ancestry anywhere in the world.