Thread by @TheWokePost

@mister18900 @SandyDarity 1. My dad was a WW2 vet, no FHA loan, & could only go to barber school. We got by b/c my mom got a city job as a lunch lady, so we had healthcare & ate leftover school lunches my mom brought home. Dad hustled as a barber & store-front preacher. They never owned a home or a car.

@mister18900 @SandyDarity 2. When dad died of cancer, the VA paid for the plot but the life ins they could afford didn’t cover all the rest. I paid.

I inherited his few books. I recall my dumb anger w/ him for “leaving me nothing, like he’d never existed”.

I didn’t know what America had done to him.

@mister18900 @SandyDarity 3. At his funeral, my mom said my dad “was too good a man to die the way he did.” I didn’t fully know what she meant then b/c we struggled much & their marriage was rocky.

W/o #ADOS historical perspective, I was measuring my dad’s life compared to White wealth.

@mister18900 @SandyDarity 4. It still hurts that I, ignorantly, once thought of my dad as a failure. It hurts even more when my mom once revealed that, when my dad was dying, he had questioned if he was a failure too.

When she speaks of him, my mom always says he was her “best friend in this world”.

@mister18900 @SandyDarity 5. Some of the books my dad left me were from the “Association for the Study of African American Life and History”, co-founded by Carter G, Woodson. They came to inspire me to learn more about my people.

Today, my dad's books are among the hundreds I own about #ADOS & Africa.

@mister18900 @SandyDarity 6. My #ADOS fight is for my dad, mom, & all my #ADOS family who lived and died thinking they had failed in life because America deliberately denied them access to wealth building.

This is very real, for me!