The Way Forward

The blood that runs through my veins has a little Nigerian, Ghanian, and Congolese in it. But more than anything, I am a child whose family was taken from our home and brought to Mississippi centuries ago.

Growing up, my mother and father would take me to their family homes and show me the graves of my ancestors.

I remember as they proudly told me about how this great uncle was the first to get free, and then he bought his wife and others or how that great aunt was the first to graduate from high school. There was so much pride in accomplishments that my classmates (who were all white for most of my life) would have taken for granted.

I also remember with pain the stories they told of the family and friends who had been lynched when they spoke out of turn.

Those stories left the greatest impression and served as a lesson in the consequences of being Black in America. I remember the desire to be as perfect as possible because I never wanted to be on the wrong side of the law. The desire for perfection nearly broke me in more ways than I can count mentally and emotionally.

As a teenager, through some strange cosmic joke, I was even arrested, prosecuted, and eventually exonerated for numerous felony offenses of which I did not commit. Still, since I was the Black teenager in the vicinity, the police decided I must…