salem

“I thought of the little slave girls, and of the little girl I had been. The secrets I kept about what had happened to me, so no one would think I was dirty. I thought of the pain of my ancestors who’d been slaves, perhaps even sold in this very place. I thought of it all, and I put my hands over my face to hide my shame, but there was an arm around my shoulder. It was Pat, and I buried my head in his chest as he hugged me tightly. He kissed the top of my head, but my weeping would not stop, as our professor’s clapping increased in volume.”
― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

“What is better than believing you are heading towards love?”
― Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water

“Black Love has always been defined by its devotion, care, and intimacy but also its resistance, its unwavering ability to persist in a world that would rather quash”
― Cole Brown, Black Love Letters

“we experience love as an escape. It is a fort we build to shield the people we love from oppression and where we take ourselves to be repaired. The people we love are our safe zones. They allow us to direct our attention away from the veil and into the worlds we build together. When two or three of us gather to love or be loved, it is already implied that each of us had to work through a thing even to offer such an extension of ourselves, which makes our love stronger.”
― Cole Brown, Black Love Letters