Dedication

This book is dedicated to my beloved brother, Christopher, and the many others who died because of racial biases in systems rooted in racism. This book seeks to honor the multitudes of those who have passed on and whose lives were cut tragically short due to apathy, bias, and racism. You were loved, then, now, and always.

There is no shortcut through grief.

“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, —this
longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better
and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost.
He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world
and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white
Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He
simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an
American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having
the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”

~ W.E.B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folks (1903)