As a Black woman and mother in America, I see that each breath I take, each act of living, is a form of resistance against oppression. Every day, I make the conscious choice to step into visibility rather than shrink away. I stand grounded, occupying space between what I know can be achieved and what feels out of reach. With every decision, I strive to remain as close as possible to the life I imagine.
There are moments when I must remind myself that I am choosing to be a public intellectual and to openly wrestle with some of the more profound questions around race, identity, and equity that I think we, as a society, need to answer. I am choosing to speak for the forgotten, to take on the pain, to hear their stories, and to turn them, like a mirror or a prism, back onto the world. I want people to be uncomfortable and unable to sleep at night. These are the same spaces where my great-grandmother stood.
Growing up, I spent every summer in South Carolina, and I learned from watching my great-grandmother how to experience moments of incredible joy within a system that seems hellbent on destroying the tiny pieces that hold you together. She grew up in Olar, South Carolina, a small town with a handful of dusty roads; a plethora of unfulfilled promises; and two of everything else: two schools, one Black, the other White; two churches, one Black, the other White; two doctors, two cemeteries, two corner stores. Even though the town tried to remain legally separated, it was so small that segregation was a conscious and sometimes inconvenient choice. It was a place where people’s lives and dreams bumped into one another.
In 1963, when my great-grandmother was already in the middle of her life, Dr. King said that the most segregated hour of Christian America was at 11 a.m. on Sunday morning. As a scholar of history, I understood this. I could not imagine that the same White folks who would go out of their way to ignore and degrade Black folks would be able to put that hatred aside to worship and pray together. How do you go from lynching Black bodies to grabbing hands and praying with them and for them? For Black women and mothers, how could they worship with hands stained with the blood of their children? How could Black men and fathers kneel, side by side, with White men who were actively trying to break their spirit?
When I shared Dr. King’s words with my great-grandmother, she both agreed and disagreed. She was a small woman with smooth brown skin, long white hair, and blue eyes. She had cataracts and glaucoma and had been blind as long as I had known her. Whenever we walked, she would place her hand through my arm, and every once in a while, she would tell me to step lightly. She argued that that hour, for real Christians who were committed to following in the footsteps of Christ, was actually the most spiritually integrated because “We were all praying to the same God, and he didn’t see color. They thought that he did, but I knew that he didn’t.” She said that the best way to move through the South, on Sunday morning or on a Tuesday night, was to assume that something was lurking in the shadows and be prepared for when it moved.
She always said the last part with a sigh, as if breathing itself was both laborious and freeing. Maybe it was just another realization. Keeping one eye open, being aware, and being wary is an ongoing act of defiance, a way of not folding yourself into the quiet. Maybe it was just an act of both revolution and rebellion. Or maybe it was just a moment when the heaviness of the years caught up with her. In all cases, I heard her because I sat at her feet and listened.
On this 19th Day of Black History Month, I challenge you to do the same– sit at the feet of our/your elders, learn their stories, and write them down. In this moment, more than any other, we need their wisdom, and we need their words.
Bending toward social justice,
Karsonya Wise Whitehead
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