Authors & Essays

When I was a kid, it didn’t take long for me to figure out what I wanted more than anything in the world: to buy my mom a house with a garage.

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, there is renewed attention to the idea of the American Dream and the promises attached to it. For many Black Americans, those promises have always been unevenly realized.

On March 7, 1965, millions of Americans watched footage from Selma, Alabama, as state troopers attacked peaceful civil rights marchers attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. What had begun as a local struggle over voting rights suddenly became a national story.

The idea of justice feels abstract, but in the lives of Black Americans it is powerfully tangible. It determines whether a mother in North Minneapolis keeps her home. Whether a teenager in East St. Paul gets a second chance—or a prison number.

In these undoubtedly challenging times, it’s important to remember the words of James Baldwin – that you think your pain is unprecedented in the history of the world until you read. Looking back on the last 250 years of this nation’s story, it’s clear that pain has been a common thread.