Category: General Topics

Black History Lives

Meeting Mrs. Sarah Collins Rudolph, the lone survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, 1963

The more I study Black history, the more I am humbled by how close it still is to us, and how often the past breathes in the same rooms we do. It lives in the hands of my elderly aunts and uncles, in my husband’s great-aunts now in their eighties and nineties, in the quiet authority of people who remember a world entirely unlike the one we inhabit today.

When I look at them, I am struck not just by their age but by the eras they have survived. Even my late parents, born in the 1940s and 1950s, moved through a country so different from the one I know that it feels almost unrecognizable. I used to think that world was gone, and in many ways, it is. And at the same time, it is also sitting across from us at dinner tables, folding laundry, telling stories we don’t always ask to hear.

This is what makes Black history (and history in general) so accessible and so urgent. It is not only found in textbooks, memorials, museums, or the names etched into stone. It is carried by people who are still alive. People whose memories collapse the distance between then and now. It reminds us that history is not just the past, but it is also inextricably connected to the present. Those who made history were simply living their lives, never knowing their present moment would one day be named.

This weekend is the perfect example of this.

On February 7, 2026, I had the esteemed honor of meeting a woman whose story should have been in our history books, but the world barely remembers her name.

On September 15, 1963, the distance between past and present collapsed in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. A bomb exploded beneath the church steps, ripping through a space that had long been a place for organizing and for Black resistance. In 1963, Sixteenth Street was the largest Black church in Birmingham, a heartbeat of the Civil Rights Movement.

History often tells this story in a single, devastating sentence: four little girls were killed. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley (between the ages of eleven and fourteen) lost their lives in an act of white supremacist terror. Their names are remembered, mourned, and rightly so.

What is mentioned less often is that there were five girls in that basement lounge that morning. Addie Mae’s sister, Sarah, was also there. She lived, but survival came at a cost that would follow her for the rest of her life.

Twelve-year-old Sarah Collins Rudolph was standing nearby when the bomb went off. The blast hurled shards of glass into her body, leaving her immediately blind in both eyes. Though she eventually regained partial sight in her left eye, her right eye was so severely damaged that it had to be removed and replaced with a prosthetic. Tiny fragments of glass remained embedded in her skin, even in her eye.

“If a single strand of hair got into my right eye socket, the pain was unreal,” she says, “The skin around my eye was very sore and still healing. It felt like something was cutting my eyes whenever hair or anything sensitive brushed over this area. The hair itself felt like tiny particles of glass stuck inside my eye socket all over again.”

– Mrs. Sarah Collins Rudolph

Sarah did not die in that basement, but she carried September 15, 1963, with her into adulthood, into older age, into the present we are still living in.

With no counseling or therapy, Sarah was forced to return to school as she struggled to heal, grieve the loss of her sister, and her old life. The world moved on. Dr. King spoke at the joint funeral for three of the girls, and it attracted over eight thousand people. Photographer Frank Dandridge took a picture of Sarah while she lay in the hospital, with patches over both eyes, and it was published in Life Magazine on September 27, 1963.

However, despite this searing image, Sarah Collins Rudolph and what happened to her faded from public consciousness, limiting her story to nothing more than a historical footnote.

It was only when Mrs. Rudolph herself felt compelled to share this story that the world began to learn about the part of that tragic day that had not been told before.

Today, Mrs. Rudolph is a social justice speaker, author, and activist speaking to people all over about what happened to her and why stories like hers matter.

Don’t forget we have Black History articles on this blog under Black History Fun Fact Friday and on Substack at substack.com@yecheilyah!

A Month and A Mirror

A hundred years ago, in 1926, Dr. Carter G. Woodson planted a small but deliberate marker in time—Negro History Week—never knowing it would one day swell into a month, a memory, a reckoning.

February has carried that weight ever since, in what is now known as Black History Month. It is a month crowded with remembrance, with names spoken loudly and moments replayed until they feel familiar.

But February also carries the ongoing debate over whether Black history should be relegated to a single month, primarily since Dr. Woodson himself never intended the week-long celebration to be permanent, let alone to encompass a whole month lasting 100 years.

For Woodson, he wanted Black history integrated into the mainstream curriculum, not restricted to a single week or, in our case, a single month.

For me, two things can be true.

If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you know I spend 90% of my time reading, researching, documenting, and sharing Black historical facts year-round. Thus, I am for incorporating Black history into the mainstream curriculum and reducing its focus to a footnote or an elective.

But I do also love the idea of keeping it separate, special, and set apart, as we are.

Additionally, it’s a great time to promote reading. The harsh reality is that American reading levels are still declining. (2024 NAEP data show 12th-grade reading scores at their lowest level since 1992.) I’d bet that your average adult had not read a full-length book since High School, if even then.

Therefore, if February is a time when the minds of the people are not as distracted, then let us use it to do some good.

To quote Bob Marley, “The people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking the day off. Why should I?”

So while Black History Month is not the movement itself, I do see it as a mirror history placed in our hands. When we look into it, we do not see the past frozen in black-and-white—we see ourselves.

Our language. Our resistance. Our contradictions.

The mirror does not lie.

It shows us who we’ve been bold enough to become and who we’ve been too afraid to remember.

Don’t forget we have Black History articles on this blog under Black History Fun Fact Friday and on Substack at substack.com@yecheilyah!

Slow Down: Why You Don’t Need to Rush the End of the Year

This is the time of year when many of us are inundated with a call to “finish the year strong.”

A time when we will be pressured by businesses, organizations, and entrepreneurial gurus to race to the finish line. Social media posts will bombard us with how many days of the year are left, year-end discounts, constant promotions, and posts about how much we’ve grown before the year is even over.

But rushing into the new year doesn’t guarantee a fresh start. Sometimes, it just carries our burnout into January.

Yes, we know. January is not the start of a New Year. Anyone who has done the tiniest bit of research knows that a real new year starts in the spring, when everything is reborn, not in the dead of winter. Stay with me tho.

We’ve all experienced or witnessed the last-minute scramble of trying to summarize the year without fully processing it: trying to complete a weight loss program, write a book, or achieve financial goals in just 10 days. Office parties, school events, family gatherings, all crammed together to see who can win the most before January first.

It can feel like we’re running from something. Perhaps a feeling of not having done “enough,” maybe comparison, and maybe the belief that value is measured by productivity.

It’s already happening with Black Friday sales. As you may have noticed, I rarely have one. I have nothing against them, and I am sure I’ll have something special in the future. Maybe even next year. But for now, it just all feels so exhausting.

I’M TIRED YA’LL.

If you are also tired, remember there is nothing wrong with slowing down at a time when everyone is speeding up. If you are a nature person like me, you know nothing blooms all year long. We were born from the Earth, yet we move opposite to it.

While humans rush to prove their year was meaningful to other flawed humans, nature is slowing down for the winter months. Animals are hibernating, finding ways to escape the cold, and trees have shed their leaves, with plants stopping growth to conserve energy. Even the soil rests, with nutrients being regenerated under frost and snow.

Meanwhile, my neighbor blows his leaves every morning. Poor thing. I want so badly to tell him they are just going to fall again. Let them leaves alone. They are doing what they are supposed to do and helping the soil in the process.

On this side of the Earth, humans accelerate and accomplish as much as possible before the final countdown. But for other living things?

For them, this is a period of rest and preparation for spring.

Slowing down isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about doing what matters with intention.

When we slow down, we reclaim time.

We notice the beauty in ordinary moments, and we greet the “new year” with clarity rather than exhaustion.

Instead of rushing to create a version of ourselves that looks good on paper, we can walk grounded, nourished, and whole.

The end of the year is not a deadline.

It’s a doorway.

Walk through it gently.

It Could Easily Be You

When I was ten years old, my family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just months after learning to walk again after the car accident. It was the only time we did not live in Chicago during my childhood.

Shortly after moving into a big, beautiful home, we were evicted. With only a few family members in the state who decided we could not live with them, my mother and her three daughters went to a woman’s shelter. My brother was welcomed to stay with an older cousin, but she didn’t have room for the girls.

I’ve gone days without food, months without a roof, and years without the kind of nourishment most people take for granted. So watching people mock families who are about to lose their SNAP benefits isn’t just sad — it’s cruel, and it reminds me how easily empathy gets lost in comfort.

In a matter of days, many American families face the risk of losing their food stamp benefits as the Trump Administration intends to cut payments, affecting about 42 million individuals across the nation. What people are feeling and witnessing is not about lazy parents who are not working to put food on the table. This is about a trash economy that has forced even the hardest-working families to rely on assistance. You might not need it today, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need it tomorrow.

Before the stock market crash of October 1929, there was a time of optimism. Many families prospered as cars and new technology grew. People did not expect to go to their banks and be locked out without warning. Families didn’t expect that they would have to stand in bread lines. It happened suddenly, and it could happen to you, too.

“The loss of SNAP benefits leads to food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition, which are associated with numerous negative health outcomes in children, such as poor concentration, decreased cognitive function, fatigue, depression, and behavioral problems.”

– Melissa Quinn, CBS News

My cousin put it perfectly on Facebook:

“Food stamps fed all of us. Medicaid paid them hospital bills. WIC kept formula in our baby’s bottles. Free lunch stopped our stomachs from growlin in class. The projects gave most of us a roof when we ain’t have one. Financial Aid got a lot of ya’ll them degrees you flexin now. We’ve all had help at some point, so quit looking down on folks still getting it. You just forgot what struggle felt like. Don’t get too high up…the ground still waiting if you fall.”

– Tiff McCormick, Facebook Post

Considering the Women in Your Life

This scene is hilarious. This man cried cause she ain’t want to give him none. Pure comedy!!

I was watching Love Is Blind. The show is pure comedy for me. I really do feel sorry for anyone who takes it seriously. It seems they intentionally cast such young people whose common sense ain’t kicked in all the way yet.

Cause love is not blind. Not even a little bit.

One of the men, Edmond, who is 29, mentioned how distant one of the women was from her man. He told his fiancé, KB (also 29), he didn’t think the woman was as close to her man, being she was distant at the pool party.

“It couldn’t have been she was on her period?” KB asked.

“Oh,” said Edmond as if someone had pulled on the chain to a lamp and the light just came on, “She was on her period?”

“Yes,” said KB. “Just started today.”

He looked surprised, as if KB had just given him the secrets to the universe. I chuckled a bit. Yea. Women get those sometimes.

Then, I had a thought.

Women go through so much that men never have to think about.

When I am planning a vacation, for example, I make sure it’s not the week of my cycle. And when I am on my menstrual cycle, I try to do as little work as possible.

Fortunately for me, I don’t work a 9-5. I work from home and create my own schedule. I am blessed to lie in bed all day if I am cramping, but not all women have this freedom.

Comedian KevOnStage joked about this recently, saying, “Women really be going through everyday life sometimes bleeding profusely. Can you imagine everyday tasks, but blood in addition to everyday life? Like, I’m stuck in traffic, and she’s stuck in traffic, but she’s bleeding profusely. Can you imagine having to come to a parent-teacher conference bleeding profusely?”

He overused the word “profusely,” but the core of the message is true. A woman can literally be working her job, picking up her children from school, grocery shopping, or stopping by the bank while bleeding profusely, and no one would ever know.

This post ain’t about periods, though.

This is about all the things women go through that rarely get considered, whether that’s menstrual cycles, pregnancy, labor, and birth, mothering, wifeing, battling oppressive systems, and any other struggle women endure that men do not always have to.

October is PAIL Month

Speaking of which, October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and it recognizes women who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, ectopic pregnancy, abortion or termination for medical reasons, and the death of a newborn.

This month, you can do your part by educating yourself on PAIL, sharing on social media, supporting the women in your life who have experienced pregnancy loss, joining local remembrance events like walks or vigils (remembrance day is 10/15), donating to relevant organizations, or simply wearing pink and blue to show solidarity.

And the next time a woman is being distant or mean or feeling some kind of way, consider what she might be battling just to get through the day, and give her a little grace.

Over on Substack, we are highlighting Mary Francis Hill Coley, the Black midwife who delivered over 3,000 babies. You can read it here.

Black History Month UK

September walked out of here like she had somewhere to be, and October is strolling in with hella causes, from Breast Cancer Awareness Month to World Mental Health Day (10/10), to PAIL: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. (We gotta come back to this one!)

Additionally, October is Black History Month in the UK, and since I haven’t seen many people in the US discuss it, let’s do so.

If you didn’t already know, October marks Black History Month in the United Kingdom and was first celebrated in October 1987 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean. (1838-1988)

The observation of October as Black History Month had its beginnings in programs and priorities of the Ethnic Minorities Unit (EMU) of the Greater London Council (GLC), and by the Principal Race Relations Adviser and Head of the Unit, Ansel Wong.

But it was Akyaaba Addai-Sebo who took it to new heights. Addai-Sebo came to the UK from Ghana to seek refuge from political persecution in 1984. Like the founder of Black History Month in America (Dr. Carter G. Woodson), Addai-Sebo wanted to challenge racism and celebrate the history and achievements of his people.

But that’s not all.

Akyaaba’s chief inspiration was young people. He says one of the reasons the celebration is in October is to appeal to children returning to school from summer break. According to one story, Akyaaba encountered a distraught mother who complained that her son (whom she had named after Marcus Garvey) asked her why he couldn’t be white.

“The inspiration for Black History Month came from an incident that happened at the GLC where I worked as the Co-ordinator of Special Projects. A colleague of mine, a woman, came to work one morning, looking very downcast and not herself. I asked her what the matter was, and she confided to me that the previous night, when she was putting her son Marcus to bed, he asked her, ‘Mum, why can’t I be white?’

A young Akyaaba Addai-Sebo

He goes on to say:

“So when this incident with Marcus took place in London, it dawned on me that something had to happen here in Britain. I was very familiar with black history month in America, and thought that something like that had to be done here in the UK, because if this was the fountainhead of colonialism, imperialism and racism, and despite all the institutions of higher learning and research and also the cluster of African embassies, you could still find a six year old boy being confused about his identity even though his mother had tried to correct it at birth.”

– Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, www.crer.org.uk

Why It Matters

Although the overwhelming majority of enslaved Blacks were transported to the Caribbean and South America, not just North America, many Americans are still not familiar with our history in other parts of the world.

For example, the English ship that brought the first recorded enslaved Blacks to the American colonies was called The White Lion and arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, on August 20, 1619. However, we were also already being enslaved by other nations, such as being brought to Puerto Rico by Spanish conquerors as early as 1509.

“People from African and Caribbean backgrounds have been a fundamental part of British history for centuries. However, campaigners believe their value and contribution to society are often overlooked, ignored, and distorted.” (trisha@whatson.uk.com)

An Artist’s Duty

I was sitting here thinking about how I got to this place of advocating for the restoration of Black history. If it were solely up to me, I would have chosen a less taxing, less unrewarding cause to advocate for.

However, in the words of Nina Simone, “I have no choice in the matter. An artist’s duty, as far as I am concerned, is to reflect the times.”

In school, I was not a student who loved history, and I certainly had no plans to teach it when I grew up.

Unlike other professions where a mistake can be smoothed over, history leaves no room for error. The slightest slip can draw the sting of a thousand voices ready to correct, dismiss, or condemn.

I’ve experienced people debating a point in a video or article they didn’t even finish watching or reading. Yet, here they are, flying Delta to the comment section to respond.

It’s like people talk with their mouths open, the meat still in between their teeth, droplets of spittle sky rocking out of their mouth from food they have not chewed properly, let alone swallowed.

In a time where many of the Civil Rights that Black people fought for are being stripped away, there is no safety net when the facts slip.

Still, I show up.

I press record and publish with hands slick from sweat, skin raw from the invisible cuts of criticism, and keep offering what my people literally bled to learn.

Even when I wonder why I’m doing this, I keep moving forward, not because it’s always fun. It is not. As the saying goes: “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”

I move forward because I must, and because, to quote Toni Morrison, “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

And so, while it is not always exciting, it is worth it.

I march on, a pen in my hand, a computer in my lap, and a calling in my heart.

I am an artist, and this is my duty.