Five men in Brown’s small army were black, a fact I never learned in school. Who were these black men, the white-centered telling of history left out, and why did they cross the bridge at Harpers Ferry that fateful night?
If teachers taught us of their bravery and sacrifice, we would know courage is not skin color. And that whiteness is not what makes us American.
It would be easy to absolve my grandfather of his choice to participate in a religion touting white supremacy by saying he was merely a man of his time. But that is a lie.
In addition to black people tirelessly championing their right to fair treatment, white men and women have fought beside them.
One such white man, John Brown, was born in 1800, like my grandfather Daniel.
“While my grandfather helped a wagon escape because his outrage moved him to take action, others were taking action to end the greed-fueled brutality of enslaved men, women, and children, living their entire lives as someone else’s property.”
TERESA’S THOUGHTS: After years of feeling the pull to write more, I have finally rearranged my life in such a way to devote more hours to writing. This rearranging involved downsizing and rebelling against consumerism which demands I spend money to keep up and impress others. Oprah Winfrey starts her podcast, “Super Soul Conversations,” withContinue reading “The Gift of Time”
