First, allow me to take you back to Black History Month, February 2018. I was sitting on my couch watching the critically acclaimed “Eyes on the Prize”, a multi-part documentary on civil rights in America. The series is produced by Blackside and the first episode is entitled “Awakenings”, based on events of 1954-1956.
When the topic came to the murder of Emmett Till, and the images of his brutalized body flashed across the scream, I jumped up in horror and shouted, “No!” My heart was ripped wide open. I reacted as any mother would to such horrific treatment of a child. I was further shocked that, in all my sixty some years, I had never even heard of the murder of Emmett Till, one of the most galvanizing events of the civil rights movement.
That is when I decided I wanted to exist differently. I wanted to know what else I was unaware of and to understand my own relationship to racism. So I read and I wrote. I took a long reflection and wrote about each decade of my life. Those reflections became my first book, “An Unintentional Accomplice: A Personal Perspective on White Responsibility.”
After the book was picked up by 2Leaf Press, I did radio interviews, author readings, etc. It seemed a few other White people recognized themselves in my stories. However, I knew I could not further my commitment to equity just working on my own. My personal history and lived experience primed me for taking the step to join the doctoral program at USC to more deeply ground myself in the theoretical research, and be in coalition with established and emerging scholars. Now that I have graduated, I remain committed to self-reflection, making sense of what is happening today, and leveraging resources for the transformation of power dynamics.