A few months later, while working in the orange and banana groves in Florida, a nice man from “up North” met my grandfather and offered him a job working in his apple orchards in upstate New York. My grandfather knew this was not just a life-changing, but a lifesaving opportunity for a poor, uneducated, Black man in the South in the 1940s. He readily accepted the offer and began preparations to move his family to New York. My family became a part of the six million Black Americans who fled the blatant racial terror and constant violence of the South, for the quiet and subtle racism of the North during The Great Migration.
I think of that night in Georgia often and how terrified my Pop Pop must have been: Wife and children sleeping inside, knowing full well that no policeman was coming to his rescue in rural Georgia. The defense and safety of his family was left to him alone. Everything I have today: my career, my Ivy League education, a bestselling book, and my physical and psychological safety are all thanks to a shotgun. I am here thanks to the violence of hope. I owe everything to a man (and a woman, ’cause you better believe my grandmother was behind that decision too!) who felt there was something better for him and his family elsewhere.
He wanted to reach for something more, even if he didn’t even know what it was. They did not know what was waiting for them on the other side of that journey. They left behind family, property, legacy, and everything that was familiar to them. When my grandmother left, she knew she’d never return, so she even signed over land she inherited from her grandfather, a slave named Bojack Lee who somehow became a landowner. They gave up their home and livelihood, and risked their lives, for a future they could not see. That is hope.
So often when we talk about hope, we speak of this ephemeral thing, something that lacks substance and can’t be seen or felt. Something so light and translucent, it cannot be touched or even fully understood. Sometimes, we speak of it as though it is a foolish thing for people who are weak or not grounded in reality. Hope is rarely a thing for grownups with real world problems to address. To me this is simply not true. Hope gave us the Civil Rights Act. Hope gave us marriage equality. Hope gave me my life. Hope, plus hard work, is what we need right now.
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