In late May, when the protests were gaining momentum and the death toll from COVID-19 had surpassed 100,000 Americans, we asked Ta-Nehisi Coates to join us as guest editor for our September issue. This edition, one of the most important of the year, is usually planned months in advance. We did not have the luxury of time, but we had something more galvanizing: the urgency of the moment.

Ta-Nehisi traveled to Louisville to report the story of Breonna Taylor as only a mother could tell it. LaToya Ruby Frazier photographed Taylor’s family, her boyfriend holding the engagement ring he was never able to propose with. Ava DuVernay spoke with the eternally prescient Angela Davis, and Deana Lawson made Davis’s portrait. Jesmyn Ward’s story arrived quietly in our inboxes and broke our hearts.

We worked under pandemic protocols. Our feature portfolio, “You Said Hope,” a collection of artists, activists, and visionaries, is the result of 19 photo shoots, often conducted in our subjects’ backyards. And the photographers, many under the age of 30, represent a new generation in our pages.

Partnering with Ta-Nehisi under the banner of Vanity Fair has been an honor, though the title “guest editor” is not honorary. He is the driving force of this body of work, both creator and collaborator. Over Zoom, on email, in text threads, we planned stories, selected photos, assigned illustrators, debated headlines, all as a team. It was our shared goal to make a magazine that would capture the spirit of this time, and that it would be beautiful, a keepsake. An object to push back against ephemerality. A way to remember, and a sign of things to come.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates Guest-Edits THE GREAT FIRE, a Special Issue
— Breonna Taylor’s Beautiful Life, in the Words of Her Mother
— An Oral History of the Protest Movement’s First Days
— Celebrating 22 Activists and Visionaries on the Forefront of Change
— Novelist Jesmyn Ward on Witnessing Death Through a Pandemic and Protests
— Angela Davis and Ava DuVernay on Black Lives Matter
— How America’s Brotherhood of Police Officers Stifles Reform
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