This TED Talk features health activists T-Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison, recorded live at TED-2017.

I am Vanessa, daughter of Annette, daughter of Olympia, daughter of Melvina, daughter of Katie,

born 1878, Parrish County, Louisiana.

And my name is Morgan, daughter of Carol, daughter of Letha, daughter of Willie, daughter of Sarah, born 1849, in Bardstown, Kentucky.

And in the tradition of our families, the great oral tradition of almost every black church we know honoring the culture from which we draw so much power,

we're going to start the way our mammas and grandmas would want us to start.

In prayer, let the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight,

O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.

We call the names and rituals of our ancestors into this room today, because from them we received

a powerful blueprint for survival.

Strategies and tactics for healing carried across oceans by African women,

passed down to generations of black women in America,

who use those skills to navigate institutions of slavery

and state-sponsored discrimination

in order that we might stand on this stage.

We walk in the footsteps of those women,

our foremothers' legends like Ella Baker,

Septima Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer,

from whom we learned the power of organizing

after she would almost single-handedly register 60,000 voters in Jim Crow, Mississippi.

60,000 is a lot of people. So if you can imagine, me and Vanessa, inspiring 60,000 women to walk of this last year, we were fired up.

But today, 100,000 black women and girls stand on this

...