I stood and stared at the footprint and couldn’t help but travel back 50 years. Calvin Bess. The name reminded me that time had passed but hurts remained. In uptown Tallahassee, the footprint lay wedged between the historic Florida State Capitol building that for me had once housed humiliating contempt and the back door of the old McCrory’s where lunch counter protesters had taken their seats and refused to budge…

In the season of our isolation we have finally found the secret to conversations. … There’s something about being inside that teaches you how to go outside…

The other day I came across an old black-and-white photo of me taken when I was 20 months old.  (I know my age because my mom labeled the picture – as she always labeled everything important in our family.) There I was in my starched Easter dress, with two braids and bows, and the biggest smile you can imagine…

In the first summer of my retirement, I volunteered to be a teacher’s helper for one hour. The kindergarten class was a miniature United Nations. A little Muslim girl with bright eyes peeking out from beneath a headscarf waved her 5-year old arms along with all the others…

When I heard that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. carried the book with him almost everywhere, I was stunned. In fact, the word is that on April 4, 1968, when King was assassinated, the book was in his room at the Lorraine Motel…

Walk in the door of Grandma’s house and the lamp was on the right.  Elegant and regal in its hand-crafted, stained glass glory it stood for 40 years on a hallway table watching who knows what history; who knows what stories;…

We sling racial slurs like snowballs. We have been socialized not to talk about race and we have been taught that race is a real thing, when, in fact, it is something human beings have made up to describe our superficial differences. Few candid and revealing conversations occur across the so-called “racial divide.” That must change. Our own personal stories are a beginning…