Long before she became the indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet on Heroes or the complicated country star Juliette Barnes on Nashville, Panettiere had already become a familiar face in the movies that lived in our DVD collections, played repeatedly on cable and became part of the cultural language of our childhoods.

She was Sheryl Yoast in Remember the Titans, the football-obsessed coach’s daughter who spent much of the film alongside Denzel Washington’s Coach Herman Boone and a team that included Wood Harris and Donald Faison. She was Gen Harwood in the Disney Channel-era favorite Ice Princess. And perhaps most memorably for many Black viewers, she was Britney Allen in Bring It On: All or Nothing, the cheer captain who found herself transplanted from the affluent Pacific Vista Pirates to the predominantly Black and Latino Crenshaw Heights Warriors.

It’s part of what has made news of Panettiere’s death at just 36 years old feel so jarring. As Hollywood mourns an actress who spent nearly her entire life in front of the camera, Black actors, former co-stars and fans have also been reflecting on the perhaps unexpected but undeniable space she occupied in Black millennial pop culture.

Viola Davis, who starred alongside Panettiere in the 2016 drama Custody, remembered the actress not only for her talent but for the person she was still becoming.

“What an amazing talent you were….so gifted,” Davis wrote. “Julius and I loved working with you….an old, wise soul with such a deep heart.”

“I wish the world had more time with you because I had a burning curiosity about who you were becoming,” Davis continued. “I saw this beautiful Phoenix rising from the ashes. Your tests became your testimony, and your testimony became your legacy.”

“You will be remembered. Rest well, Hayden,” she concluded, sending healing prayers to Panettiere’s family, daughter and those who loved her.

For Solange Knowles, the loss was especially personal.

Knowles starred alongside Panettiere in 2006’s Bring It On: All or Nothing, playing Camille, captain of the Crenshaw Heights Warriors. Released at the height of the teen-movie era, the third installment of the franchise would take on a life of its own among Black audiences. Panettiere’s Britney may have been the film’s central character, but the world around her was unmistakably Black: Solange was our cheer captain, Giovonnie Samuels and Gary LeRoi Gray were among the familiar faces in the cast, and Rihanna’s cameo turned a fictional cheer competition into an extremely mid-2000s cultural moment.

Nearly 20 years later, Knowles reflected on what it meant for the two young women to have created something together that continued to resonate.

“Rest in peace Hayden in peace because you are so deserving of it,” Knowles wrote. “We had so many parallels in our lives and the world watched u so courageously live in your radical truth telling your story.”

Knowles praised Panettiere’s “endless quest for vulnerability and healing” and reflected on “the work we created together that became something that really means something to people,” reaching audiences neither could have imagined when they were “two young girls, trying to keep looking to the light.”

“The light surrounds you now,” she wrote. “Rest easy Hayden.”

Knowles followed the tribute with a message that needed little explanation for anyone who grew up with the film: “Warriors forever.”

Their Bring It On: All or Nothing co-star Giovonnie Samuels also woke up to the news of Panettiere’s passing and a flood of messages.

“So I just woke up to the news of Hayden passing away,” Samuels wrote. “17 missed calls and text messages and everything else. This is two in one week.”

Samuels was referring to the recent death of Christy Knowings, her former castmate on Nickelodeon’s All That, adding another layer to an already difficult week of loss for those who grew up inside that era of children’s television.

“So I’m going to process,” Samuels continued. “I’ll see y’all tomorrow.”

That sense of losing a piece of an era has extended beyond the people who knew Panettiere personally.

Across social media, Black millennials have been taking inventory of Panettiere’s résumé and, in the process, realizing just how much of their childhood she occupied.

Because Bring It On wasn’t the only place our paths crossed.

There was Remember the Titans, the 2000 sports drama that became far more than another inspirational football movie in many Black households. Anchored by Denzel Washington as Coach Boone, the film explored a newly integrated Virginia high school football team navigating race, resistance and eventually brotherhood. Panettiere’s Sheryl Yoast was right there in the middle of it all, delivering football commentary with the confidence of a grown man twice her age.

There was Raising Helen, Racing Stripes and Ice Princess, the latter of which became one of those endlessly rewatched mid-2000s Disney movies. There was I Love You, Beth Cooper. And as the children who grew up watching her got older, so did the projects.

In 2011, Panettiere stepped into the horror canon as Kirby Reed in Scream 4. Funny, sharp and horror-movie obsessed, Kirby quickly became one of the franchise’s most beloved characters. More than a decade later, Panettiere returned to the role in Scream VI, allowing the millennials who first met Kirby in their teens and early twenties to meet her again as adults. And, of course, there was Heroes, where “Save the cheerleader, save the world” became one of television’s defining phrases of the late 2000s, and Nashville, where Panettiere’s portrayal of Juliette Barnes earned her two Golden Globe nominations.

For Black millennials, Panettiere’s passing has revealed something we may not have realized until now: she was woven into so many of the stories that raised us. From the sidelines with the Titans to Crenshaw Heights with the Warriors, she was there.

And sometimes, that’s the thing about childhood—you don’t know what will stay with you until you’re forced to say goodbye to it.

“Warriors forever,” indeed.