Before I was old enough to understand the intricacies of racism, I understood my mother’s stories.
I remember her telling me about the first time she rode the bus. It was 1961, and at eleven years old, she was spending the summer with her grandparents in Georgia. Sitting next to her grandmother in the back of that bus, forced to grapple with the harsh reality of segregation, was a defining moment in her life and, ultimately, my life as well.
She told me how from that day on, every time she went in and out of “colored” bathrooms and drank from “colored” water fountains, she promised that one day she would return to the South and make sure that Black people did not have to live in humiliation and fear. She had essentially channeled her rage into an expansive vision of Black liberation. My mom also channeled me—a Black feminist activist and a byproduct of her wildest dreams.
My call to activism was a slowly marinated conjuring, an answer to the prayers and dreams of my parents and ancestors. But choosing to be an activist as a Black woman in the Deep South is to also be confronted every day by the fear and psychic pain of my ancestors.
This path was laid for me as a child with every incident of racism that I observed or encountered then and, sadly, see manifested in different ways today. For the first twelve years of my life, before we moved to racist and segregated Virginia Beach, Virginia, we lived in majority Black communities.
The public schools in our new neighborhood were known to be dangerous, so my parents sent me to a private school. But this school was no safer—white boys would surround me in study hall, openly using the N-word with a hard “r.”
One day, I had had enough and arranged a meeting with the principal to address the racial violence. As one of the only Black girls in my middle school, I knew I was anything but safe as the principal smugly explained that he could understand my trauma, because he was Italian.
He took no action, and the bullying continued. I needed a lifeline. I reluctantly talked to my parents about what I was going through at school. We could barely afford tuition, and I felt small, guilty, and selfish for complaining. My dad listened quietly. His stoic nature supported my mother’s passion for immediate resistance.
Before I knew it, Mom had organized the few Black families at our school and created a week of programming for Black History Month. Her programming was dynamic and filled with the richness and beauty of Black culture. Students and teachers tasted the decadence of soul food, and the entire middle school participated in Jane Elliott’s “blue-eyed, brown-eyed” experiment for a week. As I watched students grapple with their white privilege, I pensively observed their discomfort. I remember feeling so many emotions: terror, power, and satisfaction.
I was fourteen when my family moved deeper into the South, to Alabama. We moved to my father’s hometown, which was affectionately known as the Shoals. There, everybody knows everybody, and Black folks are one multigenerational family. But our expansive Black family could not protect any of us from the insidious hatred for Black people that white Alabamans had.
By my senior year, I was fuming, ready to agitate and create my own version of resistance. I was filled with my Grandma Exzene’s fire. She was a retired elementary school principal and counselor in the Shoals. Grandma made sure I understood she “didn’t take no stuff off of white folk,” which meant I didn’t have to, either.
In my new school, we were not allowed to celebrate Black History Month, and the principal was still practicing segregation, decades after Jim Crow had become illegal. In fact, he proudly segregated Black children from their white peers during certain school activities.
I pushed the conversation forward, held meetings with my principal and teachers, and spoke out about the injustices we were experiencing to anyone who would listen. The following year, I was away at college, and Mom called to tell me about the first Black history program at my high school. She proudly told me that the program was led by students, and they were doing a fantastic job. Once I put the phone down, I realized I was getting my very first taste of revolution. And I liked it.
Fast forward to 2014, when I founded Project Say Something, an Alabama-based organization dedicated to building a movement of Black-led resistance, while simultaneously establishing holistic child-care centers that serve predominantly Black families. Within a few years of founding this Black, femme-led, racial justice organization, I was asked to speak at one of the first Pride rallies in Florence, Alabama. There were rumors that the Ku Klux Klan was going to show up because they mistakenly thought the rally was about taking down Confederate monuments.
When I arrived at the rally, police were everywhere, some standing, some on horses. I was the only Black person speaking to a crowd of 400 predominantly white people in front of the KKK, who showed up in full regalia.
My thoughts raced through history—Malcolm X’s father screaming at burning crosses, Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit,” the lynching of my ancestors. I feared my presence would not only put a target on my back but also on the backs of my husband, two sons, mother, and brother. While I had faith that the movement I was building would grow and challenge white supremacist culture, at that moment, I felt completely disarmed and unprotected, despite the presence of so many police officers who were meant to protect me but I knew would not. My husband and sons were at home—I’d discouraged them from coming to the rally without saying anything about the KKK.
But my mother insisted on coming, though I did not want her there. Her energy was cool and fearless, as she completely ignored the spectacle of the KKK. Instead, she took my hands, said a prayer, and commanded me to “get on up there.”
I walked toward the podium and widened my stance. For a moment, I took it all in, allowing myself to feel the contagious energy of young queer people fighting for their right to exist in the rural South. I looked over at the KKK and understood that they had no power over me. The louder I spoke, the louder the Klan heckled. I spoke about Blackness, intersectionality, and what I have learned from working with Black LGBTQ+ youth. I didn’t have the energy to sugarcoat or code-switch or second-guess my imperfections; it was time to speak truth to power and drop the mic.
In hindsight, the presence of the KKK that day foreshadowed the violent and growing white nationalism we have seen, not only in the South, but also across the nation. I have received countless death threats, hate mail, and a bomb threat. A white nationalist even tried to run me over while I was leading a movement of sustained protests. I was targeted by conservative politicians, including Alabama’s secretary of state and attorney general.
The year 2024 will likely be another difficult year of pulling out all the stops to fight for Black liberation. As I grapple with the residual anxiety and the complex post-traumatic stress disorder that comes with movement work, I chant the mantras: “We are not afraid. We shall not be moved.”
Now, at forty-six years old, I understand that I am not a martyr, a savior, or a superhuman caricature molded by the white gaze. I am simply tethered to a legacy of resilience that is Black Southern culture. I choose to bask in its glory while carefully chipping away at the foundation of systemic racism this country was built upon.
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