On Not Centering Ourselves in Antiracism Work
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about initially misreading a sign during our summer road trip. I used it as an illustration of the antiracism work I’ve been intentionally engaged with for the past three years—and how I’ve learned and grown through what I’ve gotten wrong...
Pondering the Importance of Apostrophe Placement
While on our month-long road trip this summer, on the back roads of Illinois, we passed the cemetery pictured above at a speed of about forty miles an hour. I asked Henry if we could turn around because my mind read “Blacks’ Cemetery,” and I couldn’t believe the...
Some Personal Reflections on Visiting the Whitney Plantation
Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared some of what Henry and I learned when visiting the Whitney Plantation while on a road trip this summer. My hope for our time there was to get a better sense of the life experience of the 10 million enslaved Africans and African...
The Cutting Season and the Wailing Season
As I noted in prior weeks, I’m sharing a series of reflections after visiting the Whitney Plantation (aka Habitation Haydel) during a four-week road trip this summer. On the late-June day we visited, the sun was hot, the humidity was high, and I couldn’t imagine being...
Understanding the Lay of the Land at the Whitney Plantation
As I mentioned last week, we visited the Whitney Plantation during our recent month-long road trip. This museum in southern Louisiana focuses extensively on the experience of enslaved people rather than glorifying the slave-owning “masters.” In this post, I want to...
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