Our History Is a Mirror: How Will We Show Up Today?
By Kandia Milton, Government Affairs Director
Black History Month always serves as an opportunity to reflect on our history and the many contributions we made to this country and the world. Growing up, I learned that our history is one of kings and queens who ruled resource-rich lands, and of, and of brilliant creatives whose innovations shaped world culture, sciences, and mathematics. It is a history of a people whose survival – through a protracted period of chattel slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, housing discrimination, and mass incarceration – is marked by profound resilience through resistance. Black History Month serves, not only, as an opportunity to reflect on our history but as a guide for how we show up today.
I have often wondered what it would have been like to be part of the great Black historical pursuits of freedom: Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad; Frederick Douglass’s efforts to hold America accountable to its ideals; or Sojourner Truth’s fight for women’s rights, even when the movement abandoned Black women and she famously asked, "Ain’t I a woman too?"
We look back at Rosa Parks and the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott, or Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr 's march for voting rights from the Edmund Pettus Bridge to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. These are the seminal moments of Black history, America’s history, which face constant threats of erasure.
While my friends and I often wonder what it would have been like to be part of those movements, the real question is: Would we have had the courage to play a role?
It is easy to romanticize our history or fantasize about what we would have done. However, if we really want to know if we would have had the courage to leave our mark on history, we need to look no further than how we are currently showing up for our country today. Are we resisting the current threats to freedom and the American Dream in the way our ancestors did, or are we simply spectators scrolling social media feeds of news commentators artfully debating a winnerless blame game of verbal gymnastics?
How are we showing up today when armed military forces have been deployed in urban centers, under the banner of stopping violent crimes in American cities seeing historical drops in crime rates? Are we among the marchers protesting unidentifiable U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who use racial profiling against Black and Brown immigrant communities? Are we speaking out against voter suppression laws, like the SAVE Act, which threatens to put up more barriers that make voting inaccessible to otherwise eligible voters across the country?
How are we showing up to protect these freedoms? Are we resisting the current threats to the American Dream as our ancestors did, or are we simply spectators?
At Dream.Org, we can carry the baton of courage, empathy, and resilience from those that came before us with our work to end cycles of mass incarceration by investing in leaders with lived experience, our efforts to stop the proliferation of toxic technology in Black, Brown, and rural communities, and our private-public collaborations to make sure historically isolated communities get connected to the jobs of the future so that they have equal access to the American Dream.
As we take pride in our contributions over the last 400 years, we must realize that these are not just snapshots in time or opportunities to idolize key figures. Our history is both heartening and informative. Let us not merely romanticize the past; let it inform and inspire the courage within you to resist during a time such as this.
Our actions today are a direct reflection of if we would have stood on the right side of the seminal moments of our history. The mirror of the present does not lie.
