Our grandparents sit us down and teach us where we come from: Africa, enslavement, Jim Crow. Our parents tell us where it’s safe to travel and where our brown skin makes us targets. Fear infects our dreams.

They don’t talk about us much in their history books. Erasing us and those whose land was stolen. It’s hard to find accounts of those who went before us, but we know we were resilient. We know we survived.

They teach us to be ashamed of the hair on our heads. We women are pressured to straighten our hair with caustic chemicals or cover it with a wig. Our wild coils are beautiful, but they say we look unprofessional.

We are paid less but are expected to be exceptional. If we dare to be average, they call us lazy. We have no money to leave our children. All we have are stories to pass down.

We have siblings, cousins, friends who aren’t here anymore, executed for the crime of being Black. We shout the names of the dead, write them on placards, print them on t-shirts. Trayvon, Breonna, George. When we protest the murders, they call it a riot.

Sometimes we dream of better days, but those dreams are haunted by the dead. Sometimes we dream of justice, but in the end, we always wake up.