When I think of emancipation, I think of all of the people who fought for freedom but who never got a chance to experience it. The end of slavery did not happen overnight, it came from intergenerational work by those who fought for a better world they knew they might never see.
Black folks have fought for freedom from the moment we first arrived on these shores. The fight for abolition took on many different forms, but that fight, that resistance, that push was always present. It chipped away at the wall. It made the dream of freedom feel more possible.
I think of this often, how my ancestors were fighting for something many of them knew they might not get to experience themselves, but they continued to fight because they knew that someone, someday would benefit from the work they put in. That remains an important lesson for me.
