BLACK MEME identifies points across history—beginning in the 1900s and traveling through to the 21st century—that have paved the way for the notion of the “meme” as we understand it today, setting the stage for the construct of digital virality. Throughout her research-based project, Legacy Russell defines “Black meme” through the notion of “the copying and transmission of blackness-as-memetic-material.” Citing sources across a wide gamut of archival media, the project explores the impact of Blackness, Black life, and Black social death on contemporary conceptions of virality borne in the age of the Internet.