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I’m Learning
I Have No Reason to Ever Feel Inferior
I come from a rich lineage of Black excellence
“Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave/I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”
— Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”
In 2017 BC (before Covid-19), I had the opportunity to visit the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The former motel is now the home of the National Civil Rights Museum where visitors can see decades of activism and achievements of Black Americans on display.
I walked through exhibits showing the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Southern lynchings, the diner sit-ins, the freedom rides, and the exact place where Dr. King lost his life. It was heavy and somber and as I took it all in, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion and I started to cry. But I wasn’t sad or even angry or scared. I felt… Powerful.
If I’m being honest, “powerful” isn’t a word I would use to describe myself. I wouldn’t call myself a highly confident person. I’m riddled with anxiety, and I suffer from imposter syndrome pretty regularly. I never even thought of myself as coming from a really powerful family with money and connections whose name carries significant weight in these streets. I always saw myself as a regular, degular girl who’s just lucky to be here.
But as I walked through that museum and absorbed all of the history within, I realized there is nothing regular or degular about my existence.
Someone in my lineage had to survive being sold and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. Someone made a life for themselves during slavery and Jim Crow. Because of someone who wasn’t able to read or write or speak the language on this continent, I’m able to be here today as a senior editor and published writer and free human being with the nerve to doubt my inner power.
I’m learning to look to my ancestors to remember who I am and all that I’m capable of. If I ever doubt…
