Freedom Day

Today is Juneteenth. Today is the anniversary of the day that the announcement was made in Texas that there was an end to slavery. Today is also my great-grandmother's birthday.

Like most great-grandmothers of her time, Mother would watch my sisters, Tiffanie, Melanie, Brittanie and I play. It wasn't until I was older that I realized she was watching us in wonderment and amazement. She watched our innocence. She watched us play in freedom. She heard stories of toys she could never have dreamed of and tales of a set of multi-racial friends she could never have had.

She watched my father, Ed Gray, dream of being a politician; knowing that one day it could come true but unable to imagine its possibility. She watched him build a life with his wife, Darla. A life where they could honestly teach us to dream dreams and set goals that girls of all colors could and would dream.

Over the years, that promise of a better, improved, more accepting America was not kept. That innocence was stripped away by years of continued hatred and bigotry and drenched in the blood of the innocent people who would see our world as a peaceful product of those who slaved before us.

It is unconscionable to me that, in this day, people of color (all colors) have to FIGHT to LIVE. Baltimore, South Carolina, Florida, New York, Texas and so many more show me that we are still slaves to our own hatred, prejudice and fear of what we don't know or understand. And it is that fear that kills us in mind, body and spirit every single day. I pray that we finally break those chains.

Mother, I continue to live for you. I continue to do the things you never could have. I continue to strive to accomplish things you were not even allowed to dream. And I continue to fight for the very freedom you wanted so much for us to have.