In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin reminds us that Black history “testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible.” And Cornel West builds on this idea when he points out that Black people have been terrorized, traumatized and brutalized for 400 years and yet are still able to create so much beauty.
Even as our Black bodies didn’t belong to us legally, we danced; even though our family relationships were violated, we found togetherness; even though our voices were repressed, we sang; even though we were deemed intellectually “inferior,” we articulated prose and poetry that was nothing less than sheer genius.