Janelle Gray

“The saddest feeling is knowing you deserve freedom and still feeling caged.”

“I watched as people went to the memorial reading the names. I started at the first entry from 1954. I read each one quietly but out loud to myself, like I’d done with the names of those in the museum. I felt somehow they were getting the message that their sacrifice was known and their voice was heard.”

“Back then, Black churches were a small piece of peace. Church was a world where, even with its imperfections, the offer of equality and common humanity was the sustenance needed to make it through the rest of the week in a society that deemed them less than human.”

“Our history, America’s history, has been so heavily edited. In history classes, we don’t really go into full discussions about the past. People, struggles, and triumphs have been erased. As a result, we now have a generation, my generation, of people who are intelligent but ignorant of and blind to the truth.”

“I once listened to a woman describe a group of men marching toward her house with sticks lit afire, screaming things like 'git the nigger' and 'kill the nigger bitch.' Those tiki torches weren't about protest. They were about a statement. It said, 'We're still here because we never left.”