My parents lived through Jim Crow. Around our dinner table, they told stories that sounded impossible to me as a child. They talked about not being allowed to eat in certain restaurants, or even to try on clothes or shoes before buying them. My father often spoke about growing up in a sharecropping family. At the end of each year, he would watch tears run down my grandfather’s face as they rode home in their wagon after settling accounts with the landowner. Despite a year’s worth of backbreaking labor, they always seemed to owe more than they had earned. They had been cheated again. They were always sinking deeper in debt, deeper in poverty, and deeper in a system designed to keep Black families from getting ahead.
These stories aren’t ancient history; they happened within my parents’ lifetimes. As the child of people who endured many other injustices, and in light of today’s fights over voting rights and representation, I feel compelled to ask whether the hard-won progress, which so many Americans bled for, is being protected, or slowly eroded by recent decisions that restrict the vote and dilute political voices.
