The footage of a police officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck until he died spread across social media and news networks earlier this year, and served as a flashpoint for widespread, sustained protests for racial justice in America. But the constant coverage of police brutality — while it intends to inform — often frames the Black American experience as one only of suffering and struggle, neglecting to portray Black lives as also full of beauty and joy, according to Jeneé Osterheldt, the culture columnist for the Boston Globe.

Osterheldt, who aims to center Black voices in her work, told Boston Public Radio on Wednesday her latest multimedia project, "A Beautiful Resistance," grew as an "organic outburst" of her usual work, aiming to share Black stories through a lens that portrays full humanity — acknowledging the struggle, without defining the Black experience by it. As she writes at the top of the project, "Blackness is not a burden."

"I went to Minneapolis for George Floyd's memorial service. I was there during the pandemic. I was there during lockdown. It was such a hard time. When I came back here I was just very emotionally depleted and sad, and I wanted to find a way to wrap my arms around the community, and that's what this is," she said. "It's me showing our joy, showing our fullness, showing our richness."

Osterheldt said Black communities often only appear in media when violence has happened, or through a conversation about racism, but are not given the nuanced coverage afforded to their white peers.

"Too often in media, Black people are only in the news when it's a hashtag because they're dead, they're brutalized, injustice or specifically because we're talking about racism," she said. "It's a problematic and racist lens that people don't want to admit that that's a bias that exists."

The first story in the series focuses on the Black community in Martha's Vineyard from modern day vacationers to the historic Shearer Cottage — listed in the "Negro Motorist Green Book" as a safe place for Black visitors in the 1900s, and still operational today.

The first two installments of "A Beautiful Resistance" are live on the Boston Globe website now, and more are forthcoming.