Ernest Morrell: A Life in Literacy, Love, and Liberation by Charles Clark

 

Dr. Ernest Morrell, who passed away on February 4, 2026, was one of the most influential literacy scholars and English educators of his generation—a thinker, teacher, and leader who insisted that language and literacy are central to justice, joy, and possibility in young people’s lives. At the time of his passing, he was the Coyle Professor of Literacy Education at the University of Notre Dame, where he also served as professor of English and Africana Studies, director of the Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education, and associate dean for the humanities and faculty development.

Morrell’s path into education began in California, where he completed his B.A. and later a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of California, Berkeley, earning an outstanding dissertation award. Across appointments at UCLA, Michigan State University, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Notre Dame, he developed a body of work that redefined what English classrooms could be: spaces where students analyze popular culture, critique injustice, and see their own languages and stories as worthy of serious intellectual attention. His research interests—critical pedagogy, literacy studies, diaspora cultural studies, youth popular culture—were never abstract; they were grounded in the everyday lives of Black, Brown, and multilingual youth in urban schools.

A prolific scholar, Morrell authored more than 100 articles, briefs, and chapters and 15 books, including Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, Critical Media Pedagogy: Teaching for Achievement in City Schools, and, most recently, Critical English Education: Enduring Voices, New Perspectives, released in January 2026. In that volume, he and his coeditors traced 60 years of critical English education scholarship while charting a forward-looking agenda for teachers, researchers, and doctoral students, and he arranged for royalties to support NCTE’s ongoing work—a final gesture that matched his long-standing commitment to strengthening the profession.

Morrell’s leadership extended far beyond his home campuses. A member of the National Council of Teachers of English for more than three decades, he served as NCTE president in 2014 and, beginning in 2020, directed the James R. Squire Office for Policy Research in the English Language Arts. Under his guidance, that office produced influential policy briefs connecting classroom practice, literacy research, and equity-focused advocacy, offering English teachers concrete tools to “uplift the brilliance of every young person in every classroom,” as one of his former doctoral students, now NCTE president, reflected.​

The field recognized his impact with some of its highest honors. Morrell received NCTE’s Distinguished Service Award (2019) and the James R. Squire Award (2025), given sparingly to members whose work has transformed English education as a discipline. He was elected a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, a member of the National Academy of Education, and, in 2024, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences—distinctions that placed him among the most respected public voices in education. Since 2015, he was annually listed in Education Week’s Edu‑Scholar Public Influence Rankings, a testament to the reach of his ideas beyond academia.

Yet colleagues and students consistently describe Morrell’s greatest legacy not only in terms of awards or titles, but in his way of being with people. In tributes, he is remembered as a “legendary scholar” and also as a generous mentor who made time for emerging teachers and researchers, a gentle presence whose belief in their potential shifted careers and classrooms. In public talks, he returned again and again to a simple conviction: that “there is no higher social calling, no work more honorable than teaching critical approaches to the consumption and production of language,” and that what students will remember most is the love and care their teachers offered.

Dr. Ernest Morrell’s life work fused rigorous scholarship with unapologetic care for youth and teachers, insisting that literacy is a vehicle for agency, solidarity, and more just futures. As English educators, researchers, and students continue to draw on his books and policy work, they also carry forward his charge: to teach in ways that honor every students’ brilliance and to use literacy as a means of imagining—and building—better worlds.

Revisited | Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th by Lavelle Eagle

 

Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th is a devastating and illuminating exploration of how slavery in the United States did not end so much as evolve into new forms of racial control, culminating in the contemporary crisis of mass incarceration. Taking its title from the 13th Amendment—which abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime”—the film argues that this exception clause opened a legal and moral loophole that has been exploited for more than 150 years to criminalize Black people and maintain a racial caste system. Rather than treating this as an abstract constitutional quirk, DuVernay frames it as the throughline connecting Reconstruction-era Black Codes to chain gangs, Jim Crow, the war on drugs, and today’s prison-industrial complex.

Structurally, 13th unfolds as a fast-paced historical and political essay, moving chronologically from the aftermath of the Civil War to the present. The film details how, immediately after emancipation, Southern states passed laws that turned everyday behaviors—loitering, vagrancy—into crimes disproportionately enforced against newly freed Black people, who were then leased out to plantations and corporations as convict labor. DuVernay links this system to early racist propaganda like The Birth of a Nation, which portrayed Black men as dangerous criminals and helped justify both lynching and segregation in the white imagination. As the film moves through the civil rights era into the late twentieth century, it shows how “law and order” rhetoric, the war on drugs, and mandatory minimum sentencing fueled an explosion in the prison population, with Black and brown communities bearing the brunt.

A major strength of 13th is its use of a wide range of voices to build its case. DuVernay interviews scholars, activists, formerly incarcerated people, and policy experts, including Angela Davis, Michelle Alexander, Bryan Stevenson, and Van Jones, among others. Their commentary is intercut with archival footage of protests, police brutality, presidential speeches, and news clips, creating a layered narrative that feels both historically grounded and painfully contemporary. The film even includes conservative commentators and former officials, which adds nuance and underscores that the machinery of mass incarceration has been supported by both major political parties.

Visually and stylistically, the documentary is striking. The interviews are shot against stark, minimalist backgrounds, which keeps the focus on the speakers’ words and emotions. DuVernay overlays statistics and bold text on screen—graphs of the prison population, numbers of incarcerated people—so viewers can see the scale of the crisis at a glance. She also uses music, including hip-hop and protest songs, with lyrics highlighted on screen to emphasize how Black artists have long been narrating the realities of surveillance, policing, and imprisonment. This blend of formal interviews, archival material, and artistic expression gives the film a rhythm that is more urgent than a traditional, sedate documentary.

One of the most impactful sections of 13th is its examination of the relationship between policy, profit, and incarceration. The film traces how the prison boom coincided with the rise of private prisons, lobbying groups like ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), and corporate interests that benefit from cheap prison labor and tough-on-crime legislation. By connecting the dots between political speeches, model bills, and corporate contracts, DuVernay dismantles the notion that mass incarceration is simply the result of more “crime.” Instead, she presents it as a system shaped by deliberate choices, ideological narratives, and economic incentives that dehumanize certain populations for profit.

As a viewing experience, 13th is emotionally intense and often difficult to watch. The film confronts viewers with images of lynchings, police killings, and anguished families, alongside footage from protests and riots that echo across decades. This can feel overwhelming, but that discomfort is part of the film’s purpose—it refuses to let racism remain a purely intellectual topic. Instead, DuVernay insists that the viewer reckon with the human cost of policies and ideologies that are too often discussed only in abstract terms.

Critics sometimes note that the documentary’s argument is unapologetically forceful and leaves little room for alternative interpretations of the data. But 13th is not trying to be a neutral, both-sides account; it is a piece of advocacy, grounded in evidence, that seeks to make visible structural violence that has long been minimized or denied. For educators, students, and general audiences, this clarity is a strength: the film provides a powerful framework and shared vocabulary for discussing mass incarceration, systemic racism, and the unfinished work of the civil rights movement.

Ultimately, 13th succeeds both as cinema and as civic intervention. It is tightly edited, intellectually coherent, and emotionally resonant, and it leaves viewers with pressing questions about justice, democracy, and who is considered fully human under the law. In showing how the legacy of slavery continues to shape criminal justice, DuVernay makes it clear that confronting mass incarceration is not a niche issue, but central to any honest conversation about freedom in the United States.

Left for Dead: Missing, Black, and Unseen by Charles Clark

Left for Dead” (2025) is a true‑crime social justice documentary that follows two Black families over more than ten years as they search for relatives who vanished under suspicious circumstances, and confront a system that treats their disappearances as disposable. The film interweaves their investigations with a broader critique of how missing Black Americans are ignored by law enforcement, media, and policymakers, using intimate family footage, interviews, and case documents to expose structural racism and demand that Black lives be valued long after the headlines move on.

The documentary opens by grounding viewers in the emotional shock of each disappearance: phone calls that go unanswered, routines suddenly broken, and the first frantic attempts to get help. Police initially dismiss both cases, suggesting the missing relatives are probably fine, reinforcing a painful pattern Black families know too well: when their loved ones disappear, authorities often assume they left voluntarily, are involved in crime, or are simply not a priority. As days turn into years, the families become their own investigators, creating flyers, searching neighborhoods, organizing community searches, and pushing relentlessly for media attention.

Stylistically, “Left for Dead” relies on a mix of present‑day interviews, archival news clips, home videos, and, at times, surveillance footage and official documents. This layered approach keeps the focus on the families’ perspective rather than sensationalizing the crimes themselves. The camera lingers on quiet, domestic moments—a parent folding clothes in a room that has not changed in years, a birthday marked with an empty chair—to show how grief becomes a permanent, living presence. These scenes make clear that a missing person is not just a statistic; they leave a hollow space that reshapes everyone’s daily life.

A major strength of the film is the way it connects individual stories to a national crisis. Throughout, the documentary brings in advocates, researchers, and grassroots organizers to explain the stark racial disparities in missing‑persons responses: Black people, especially women and girls, go missing at disproportionately high rates but receive less media coverage, fewer investigative resources, and slower responses from law enforcement. The concept of “missing white woman syndrome” is implicitly present as a contrast; cases involving white victims often draw intense media attention and swift police action, whereas the families in “Left for Dead” have to fight even to get a report taken seriously.

Over the decade, we see the families evolve from private mourners into public activists. They organize rallies, testify at local meetings, and partner with organizations that track missing Black people nationwide. The documentary shows how activism and grief become intertwined: pushing for legislative reforms, better police protocols, and a national reckoning over whose safety matters in America. The film does not present activism as an easy path to healing; instead, it shows how advocacy is both empowering and exhausting, driven by the refusal to let their loved ones be forgotten.

“Left for Dead” is particularly effective in highlighting institutional indifference without reducing every officer or reporter to a villain. Some officials express regret and acknowledge failures, while others remain defensive or evasive. This nuance underlines a central argument of the film: the problem is not only individual prejudice but a system that consistently devalues Black lives and treats their pain as an afterthought. By the end, viewers understand that these families are not asking for special treatment; they are asking for the baseline level of care and urgency routinely extended to others.

As a viewing experience, the documentary is emotionally heavy but purposefully so. It resists the neat closure often sought in true‑crime narratives; answers, when they come, feel partial and bittersweet, and some questions remain unresolved. This refusal to wrap the story up with a tidy resolution reflects reality for many families of the missing, especially in Black communities, where cases can remain open—and largely unattended—for years. The final scenes focus on memory and legacy: community events, murals, and vigils that insist these lives mattered, even when institutions acted as if they did not.

Overall, “Left for Dead” is a powerful and necessary work that goes beyond recounting two cases of disappearance to indict a broader culture of neglect. It invites viewers to see missing Black Americans not as background noise in crime statistics but as sons, daughters, siblings, and parents whose absence tears holes in families and communities. For anyone interested in documentaries that combine true crime with a sharp analysis of race, justice, and media, this film offers a sobering but vital perspective, urging audiences to ask why some people are searched for relentlessly while others are effectively left for dead.

Music Review | Zacardi Cortez’s “Working On Me by Robert M. Marovich

 

“Working On Me” 

Zacardi Cortez 

From the Blacksmoke Music Worldwide 

album Ibhar: The Journey (Chapter 2) 

(album release date: November 14, 2025) 

Zacardi Cortez’s “Working On Me,” from Blacksmoke Music Worldwide’s album Ibhar: The Journey (Chapter 2) (released November 14, 2025), is a gritty, confessional gospel track that showcases his trademark intensity and vocal firepower. In the song, Cortez cries out to God for a “brand new start,” seeking spiritual restoration after a series of poor decisions that “only led to mistakes.” He doesn’t just sing about brokenness in the abstract; he owns it, turning the lyric into personal testimony. “He’s not through with me yet,” he proclaims, insisting that he is still a work-in-progress and urging listeners not to “throw [him] away.”

Vocally, Cortez shouts, squalls, and soars like a seasoned quartet lead, drawing on the raw emotion that has defined his career since his early days. Co-written with Christopher Conway and producer Morgan Turner for Blacksmoke CEO Kerry Douglas, the song fits squarely within the contemporary gospel tradition of honest, vulnerable testimonies set to powerful, churchy arrangements. While many first encountered Cortez on his 2012 solo debut The Introduction, or through his electrifying features on James Fortune & FIYA’s “The Blood” and “I Believe,” “Working On Me” reminds listeners why he remains one of gospel’s most compelling voices of confession, hope, and ongoing transformation.

Robert M. Marovich is the publisher of the Journal of Gospel Music Blog. 

Race, Despair, and Hope in Cornel West’s Race Matters by Stanley Johnson

Cornel West’s Race Matters remains a foundational text for understanding race, democracy, and moral life in the United States, and it still feels urgently relevant decades after its first publication. Through eight essays that blend philosophy, theology, and political critique, West exposes the limits of both liberal and conservative racial discourse and calls for a deeper moral and spiritual reckoning with what it means to live in a racist society.

Overview and key themes

Published in 1993, Race Matters grew out of the social and political crises of the early 1990s, including the Los Angeles uprisings. West argues that mainstream conversations about race are trapped in a shallow tug-of-war: liberals emphasize programs and policy, conservatives emphasize personal responsibility, and both camps miss the existential and spiritual dimensions of Black suffering. Across essays on Black leadership, Black-Jewish relations, Black conservatism, sexuality, affirmative action, and Malcolm X, he insists that “race matters” not as a narrow demographic issue but as a window into America’s moral condition.

One of the book’s central ideas is the “nihilistic threat” in Black America: a pervasive sense of meaninglessness, lovelessness, and hopelessness produced by structural oppression and cultural decay. West contends that economic and political reforms are necessary but inadequate unless accompanied by a politics of love, care, and community that restores dignity and hope.

Strengths: Moral clarity and intersectional critique

A major strength of Race Matters is West’s ability to hold multiple truths at once. He condemns structural racism, poverty, and state violence while also challenging sexism, homophobia, and antisemitism within Black communities. His chapter on Black leadership, for example, criticizes both symbolic, media-driven figures and elected officials who lack moral vision, arguing that leadership must be grounded in integrity, courage, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.

The essay on Malcolm X exemplifies West’s nuanced approach. He honors Malcolm as a prophetic critic of American racism and liberal gradualism, while also exploring the limits of nationalist politics that can slide into isolation or romanticized militancy. Similarly, his discussion of affirmative action acknowledges its flaws—especially its tendency to benefit the Black middle class—yet defends it as a necessary, if imperfect, tool against the resurgence of discrimination.

For educators and students, West models how to perform intersectional critique without abandoning solidarity. He refuses to idealize any camp: liberal, conservative, nationalist, or radical, insisting instead on a democratic ethos rooted in empathy, accountability, and serious historical memory.

Style and accessibility

West writes in a hybrid style that weaves academic theory, prophetic sermon, and personal reflection. His language can be dense and allusive—drawing on traditions from Black church oratory to European philosophy—but the essays are relatively short, each presenting a problem, analyzing it, and then sketching a path forward. For advanced high-school or undergraduate readers, this structure makes the book teachable: each chapter can anchor a focused discussion or writing task about a specific issue such as nihilism, leadership, or affirmative action.

At times, the very qualities that make West compelling—his sweeping moral claims and big theoretical moves—can feel more evocative than concrete. Readers looking for detailed policy proposals or empirical data may find his solutions underdeveloped compared to his diagnoses. Still, the book’s primary aim is not technocratic reform but moral imagination: to reframe how we think and feel about race, democracy, and responsibility.

Ongoing relevance

More than thirty years after its initial publication, Race Matters reads less like a period piece and more like a lens for understanding contemporary struggles over policing, inequality, and “color‑blind” rhetoric. West’s warning that denial of race’s significance serves to protect the status quo feels especially pointed in an era of backlash against movements for racial justice.

As a classroom text or book-club selection, Race Matters invites readers to grapple with uncomfortable questions: What does it mean to talk about love in politics? How do we confront nihilism without moralizing or blaming the poor? What kind of leadership do oppressed communities actually need? Its greatest contribution is not that it answers these questions once and for all, but that it insists we cannot avoid them if we are serious about building a more just society.

Stanley Johnson is the Editor at Large for Brothamagazine.com 

Classroom, Choir Stand, and the Cross: The Many Voices of Terrence J. Dooley by Charles Clark

Terrence J. Dooley moves through a school hallway the way he moves a choir stand on Sunday—focused, intentional, and just playful enough to keep everyone on their toes. A celebrated gospel choir master and a full‑time classroom teacher, he has quietly crafted a life where blackboard and B3 organ, lesson plans and lead sheets, all live in the same sacred space.​

A man of many callings

Ask Terrence J. Dooley who he is, and he does not start with accolades or chart positions. He calls himself a man of God, a father, a husband, a teacher, a former athlete and lifelong basketball enthusiast, and, maybe surprisingly, a lover of comedy. Comedy, he explains, fuels his creativity, helping him stay loose enough to write freely and connect to people on and off the stage. That sense of range—sacred and silly, disciplined and improvisational—shows up in everything he touches, from his classroom culture to the way his choir, Terrence J. Dooley & Testimony, sounds on record.​

Teaching was not a fallback but an early dream. He remembers flipping through an old middle‑school yearbook and seeing that he had already written “teacher” as his future occupation. He loved to help people, to share what he had, and to lead, even as a kid, and though the road to the classroom was “scenic,” landing there feels like a promise kept.​

In the classroom, presence and representation

This school year, Dooley admits, has been draining. “Everybody’s been in their rooms just with their heads down,” he says, describing colleagues returning from break and diving straight back into the grind. Yet he remains deeply committed to the work, insisting that the key is ruthless prioritizing—protecting rest, planning ahead, and honoring downtime as much as rehearsal time. On Saturdays and Sundays, he pours himself into music and ministry, but by Monday he knows teenagers are coming “with full energy” and expects himself to be ready to receive them.​

As a black man in the classroom, he sees his presence as non‑negotiable. From kindergarten through his master’s degree, Dooley never had a single Black male teacher, a void he still feels when he looks back. He does not claim that representation alone would have changed his grades, but he understands the power of walking into a room and seeing someone who looks like you in charge, making the classroom feel like an “all‑around safe space.” His own management style is direct and relational—“we can laugh, we can joke… but y’all gonna act like you have some sense in this class, and you’re gonna do your work”—and it has translated into strong rapport, solid grades, no write‑ups, and a room where students know they are heard.​

A versatile sound, on purpose

If the classroom is where Dooley shapes lives, the choir stand is where he narrates his own. His catalog—songs like “Lift Him Higher,” “Mystery,” “Turning Point,” “Trust in the Lord,” “I Owe God Praise,” “Testimony,” and “Where Would I Be”—has earned him a reputation as one of the finest choir masters of his generation. One hallmark of Terrence J. Dooley & Testimony is that no two songs sound alike. Listeners will not find the same groove recycled at three different tempos; instead, each album plays like a journey rather than a loop.​

That variety is not accidental. Dooley loves big choir music, but his tastes stretch into worship, jazz, and beyond. He played in jazz band in high school, a New Orleans‑flavored influence that surfaces on the song “Mystery,” and he carries that eclecticism into his arrangements. He often returns to something he heard from Prince: albums matter. To him, a project should move through keys, textures, and moods, resisting the temptation to chase one proven sound just because it once “popped” in a certain season.​

Making albums in a singles world

In an era dominated by streaming and singles, Dooley still believes in the full album, even as he acknowledges the economics have shifted. When he released his first project around 2010–2011, the CD release concert served as both ministry event and business strategy, with physical sales helping recoup thousands of dollars in costs in a single night. Today, supporters “go to Spotify” instead—and their version of support, he notes with some honesty, is his too—yet that support pays only pennies, sometimes barely a penny for an entire album stream.​

Still, he keeps creating. A new album, recorded several years ago but delayed by life—a master’s degree, two children with his wife, and buying a house—is finally ready, with a release planned for the first half of this year. The project, featuring powerhouse evangelist Lillian Lloyd in a marathon, 20‑minute performance the team is still “trying to chop… to make it palatable,” promises the same breadth his listeners have come to expect. There will be church choir anthems, songs that put “a little boom in your subwoofers,” and, above all, lyrics anchored in Scripture.​

Keeping Jesus at the center

If versatility is one pillar of Dooley’s work, theological clarity is the other. The new material, he stresses, is intentionally Christ‑centered, a response to a landscape where some music labeled “gospel” feels more vaguely inspirational than explicitly rooted in Christian confession. He does not deny the need for clean, uplifting songs of all kinds, but he draws a clear line: if it is called gospel music—which he defines broadly as Black Christian music—it should stay close to the vine. On this upcoming album, that conviction shows up even in the titles: “Tell Somebody About Jesus,” “Follow Jesus,” “I Love the Lord,” “Praise the Name of Jesus.”​

Dooley is a student of those who kept that center of gravity before him. As a lyricist and arranger, he has studied James Hall, Donald Lawrence, the late Richard Smallwood, Kurt Carr, Fred Hammond, and John P. Kee, artists who, in his view, write the majority of what they record and marry strong theology with sophisticated musicality. He also carries lessons from mentors closer to home—Bishop Roger Harrison, local ministers of music like James Watley and Gary Lewis, and Elder Walter Roberts in Columbus, Ohio, whose hymn traditions continue to shape Dooley’s own writing.​

Between the classroom and the choir loft, Terrence J. Dooley is building something that looks less like a career and more like a calling lived out in harmony—rigorous, joyful, biblically grounded, and unmistakably his. For those who want to follow that journey, he keeps it simple: search his full name—on any streaming platform, on social media, or at his website—and the music and ministry of Terrence J. Dooley & Testimony are right there, ready for the next lesson, the next service, the next song.​

Where Are You, Brother: Reclaiming Identity Through Faith & Black History by Granvel Johnson

Personal identity matters because it influences how we see ourselves, make decisions, and interact with others. Identity shapes how we think, feel, choose, love, and hope—from what we eat to where we live to how we dream. Strong identity ties us to community, family, culture, and faith. A clear and healthy identity strengthens self-esteem, confidence, and our sense of God-given purpose.

This article encourages African American Christian men to recognize that a positive racial identity as an essential part of a whole and grounded Christian identity. To understand where we are, we must begin where Scripture begins—with God’s questions.

 God’s Questions About Identity

After Adam and Eve sinned, God asked Adam, “Where are you?” God was not confused about Adam’s physical location; He was calling Adam to recognize his changed moral and spiritual condition. God’s question invited Adam into self-reflection: Where am I in relationship to God, my community, and to myself? Who have I become? Why?

Later, God asked Jacob, “What is your name?” Again, the question was not for God’s information but for Jacob’s transformation. Before Jacob could become Israel—a man with a new identity and purpose—he had to confront the distorted identity he had lived into. My brothers, God requires no less of us?

As sin distorted Adam’s identity, America’s sin has marred ours. Racism has left deep spiritual, emotional, and psychological wounds across our communities.  As Jacob wrestled, so must we. We must grapple with the long history of lies, miseducation, and terror that still impacts us. Only then can we fully become the men God envisioned when He meticulously and lovingly made us.

 The Assault on Black Identity

For more than 400 years, our ancestors have survived brutal slavery, lynchings, degrading racial segregation, fire-bombings, the theft of labor, land, and life. We’ve lived with public humiliation and private trauma. Countless times we’ve been reclassified, redefined, and renamed: slave, negro, colored, mulatto, quadroon, griffe, octoroon, Negroid, etc.   

Even our attempts at self-definition—Afro-American, Black American—reflect a long wrestling with God’s perennial question: What is your name? We cannot answer truthfully without confronting the forces that tried to name us something less than human.

How Identity Gets Distorted

At first glance, identity appears simple. But in a society where schools, media, politics, and culture bombard us with negative images of Black life, it is easy to lose a healthy sense of self. 

In the Garden of Eden, the serpent sought to rob Adam and Eve of their position in God’s family. In the United States, enslavers sought to rob us of our place in humanity. White supremacist culture relentlessly distorts Black personhood at its core—spiritually, morally, psychologically, and physically—it then manipulates the world into believing it is innocent.

Racism destroys self-esteem, self-respect, and hope. Its goal is dependency and division, so victims unknowingly rely on racist ideologies for direction, validation, and identity. Dr. Carter G. Woodson wrote: “If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to concern yourself with his actions.” Claude Steele confirms that repeated exposure to negative portrayals of Black people produces low self-esteem, expectations, motivation, and self-doubt. Du Bois called this psychic fracture double consciousness:

“One feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts… two warring ideals in one dark body.”

White people are simply “Americans.”  We, on the other hand, are “the other” —American enough to pay taxes and fight wars, but denied equal citizenship. Black soldiers were expected to stand and fight for our nation’s freedom, but were beaten for sitting at a lunch counter.  They recited “with liberty and justice for all,” then were lynched in their uniforms. More recently, Colin Kaepernick was labeled a traitor for kneeling against injustice, but Robert E. Lee—who fought to enslave our ancestors—was honored at the Pentagon.

Racism gaslights its victims. It turns communities against themselves and then feigns innocence.  Donna Bivens explains:

“As people of color are victimized by racism, we internalize it… we develop ideas, beliefs, actions, and behaviors that support or collude with racism.”

How often do we hear this among ourselves:

 

• “I used a Black mechanic once. Never again.”

 

• “Black banks? Girl, the ATM wasn’t even working.”

 

• “I only date light-skinned people. I want kids with good hair.”

 

• “We’re just not gifted in those areas.”

Meanwhile, similar mistakes by white professionals are dismissed as human error—not evidence that all white people are incapable. Fractured identities persist because racism distorts the mirror we look into. Dr. Franz Fanon notes that personal identity is shaped by broader cultural narratives—by the stories a society tells. As a result, the oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.

Uncritically embracing the stories of our oppressors is an act of spiritual suicide. Embracing our full identity as children of God requires a fearless examination of the narratives handed down to us as “history.” Healing begins with reclaiming the truth: we are capable, beautiful, relevant, powerful, and made in God’s image. This is not pride. It is not opposition. It is healing. It is truth-telling. It is the recovery of what was stolen.

Who are you? What’s your name? These questions are not rhetorical—they are answered in the lives of those who came before us. Each of these men and women demonstrates the truth of who we have always been: capable, inventive, courageous, and divinely created for purpose.

 

• Onesimus, an enslaved African, introduced smallpox inoculation to the colonies, saving Boston from the 1721 epidemic. It later helped Washington’s army defeat the British.

 

• Dr. Halle T. D. Johnson was the first licensed female doctor in Alabama—of any race.

 

• Dr. William J. Knox, Jr. supervised an all-white team at Columbia University working on the atomic bomb.

 

• C. R. Patterson and Sons, a Black-owned auto manufacturer, began production in 1915.  The company manufactured cars, trucks, and buses. Unfortunately, it did not survive the Great Depression.

 

• Dr. Solomon Fuller’s research undergirds our modern understanding of Alzheimer’s.

 

• Dr. Matilda A. Evans was the first Black female doctor in South Carolina. Her public-health model for Black children was adopted statewide.

 

• James Armistead, under the guise of a British spy, passed intelligence to George Washington which led to the defeat of the British at Yorktown in 1781, and our national independence.

 

• Julian Abele designed Duke University’s entire main campus, including Duke Chapel and the historic Cameron Indoor Stadium. He designed or contributed to the design of over 400 buildings, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Harvard's Widener Memorial Library.

 

• Dr. Charles Henry Turner proved that insects can hear, learn by trial and error, and that bees see in color and recognize patterns. The French naturalist Victor Cornetz later named the circling movements of ants returning to their nest tournoiement de Turner (“Turner circling”), a phenomenon based on one of Turner’s discoveries.

 

• Dr. Marie Maynard Daily disclosed the relationship between high cholesterol and clogged arteries and increased our understanding of how foods and diet affect the health of the heart and the circulatory system.

From the ironing board, to the designs for the original Ford Mustang, to life-support systems for the Apollo 13–era space suits: God continues to ask, “Who are you?”

The Power of Knowing Who You Are

Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman wrote about a powerful experience he had in Daytona Beach with his young daughters. They saw swings on a school’s playground but were not allowed to use them. The girls asked him why.

Thurman explained:

“I said, ‘It is against the law for us to use those swings, even though it is a public school. At present, only white children can play there. But it takes the state legislature, the courts, the sheriffs and policemen, the white churches, the mayors, the banks and businesses, and the majority of white people in the state of Florida – it takes all these to keep two little black girls from swinging on those swings.

“That is how important you are! Never forget, the estimate of your own importance and self-worth can be judged by how many weapons and how much power people are willing to use to control you and keep you in the place they have assigned to you. You are two very important little girls. Your presence can threaten the entire state of Florida.”

Knowing who you are—and knowing who your people have always been—is a form of liberation. It threatens white supremacy.

God’s questions echo across generations:

“Where are you?”

“What is your name?” 

We cannot answer these questions truthfully without understanding the story we come from—its pain, its glory, its struggle, and its divine resilience. A positive, truthful racial identity is not separate from our Christian identity; it strengthens it. God has always been in the business of restoring names, healing wounds, and calling people into wholeness.

To know our history is to reclaim our identity.
To reclaim our identity is to heal.
And to heal is to walk fully into the men God created us to be.