Crystal > Recent Status Updates

Ida B. Wells was a baaaaaaad woman! 🙌🏾

Reinhold Niebuhr, a 20th-century Theologian, who supported Black liberation wrote, “The white race in America will not admit the negro to equal rights if it is not forced to do so.”

True to this day. Sadly.

“What I have is beautiful music inspired by struggle and fierce love. What he got ain’t nothing but hateful noise. Not a hint of soul to it. Like unseasoned meat.”

[Epilogue] “The blacks who arrived from Africa and the Caribbean entered a country where people of African descent could breathe freer for all that had come before them.”

*This is very important to understand. When African-Americans win civil rights victories it doesn’t just benefit us, it benefits every person of African descent across the diaspora, and person of color overall, that enters this country.

“A heavy snow fell outside. In a symbolic kind of way, snow was to Chicago what cotton was to Mississippi. Both were so much a part of the landscape of either place that where you saw snow you by definition would not see cotton and vice versa. Coming to Chicago was a guarantee that you would not be picking cotton. The people sitting at the dining room table this late winter night had chosen snow over cotton.”

“Robert’s near whiteness provided a service to them from time to time, but with it came downright flakiness.” 😂😂

“Black southerners stepped into a hierarchy that assigned them a station beneath everyone else, no matter that their families had been in the country for centuries.”

(Pg 30) “I couldn’t comprehend why such violence and hatred had been unleashed upon innocent people. It was clearly the devil’s work.”

(Pg 16) “I remember being a young girl in Greenwood & how it was a lively & vibrant community where we had everything we needed - churches, lawyers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, soda shops, teachers, beauty parlors, grocers, department stores, places to eat, banks, etc. We had it all. We thrived despite the challenges of Jim Crow segregation.”

Sheila is the epitome of strength and resilience. OMG!

One month later, I am still on cloud 9 after visiting Ghana 🇬🇭 and South Africa 🇿🇦 for the first time. An amazing experience!
And, after seeing tote bags with the cover design of the book “Homegoing” (by Yaa Gyasi) imprinted on them, I look forward to cracking the book open in 2024. 📚

[Ruby’s story] I can feel the sadness in the young ladies soul living in the Gingerbread house waiting to deliver. They needed support, love, and comfort during that time. They needed a comforting hug so bad. They needed loving families to help them through it all, and not be shipped off to that home. 🙁