Navigating our society’s reliance on gendering everything from language to objects to colors is a complex endeavor. Our entire culture developed around the binary framework of male or female. We see pink ear plugs for the ladies, hand sanitizer labeled macho style for the men, and even something as universal as soda gets gendered … [Read more…]
The story I want to tell about my mama doesn’t really have anything to do with her southern-ness. Except that it happened in the South, and she’s southern. This is a story about tween girls misbehaving and the repercussions when we got caught by my mama. Good enough? When I was in the 8th grade, my friends … [Read more…]
My mother is a maker. Oddly enough, not until I wrote that last sentence did I fully realize that she gave me one of the things that brings me such joy in my life – the passion to make things. This revelation is odd in part because my mother is also a critic. Some … [Read more…]
Hot, nasty, sexy speed. America is all about speed and race cars. Originating in the South during Prohibition, an underground racing circuit transporting alcohol became what we know today as NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. As the NASCAR lore begins, a “bunch of dirt poor good ol’ boys who lived anywhere … [Read more…]
“Better had Jefferson Davis and every man who held a commission in the Confederate Army been shot for treason than universal suffrage bestowed on an ignorant race.” – Captain E.W. Cannon, writing about Reconstruction. I remember the first time I said it out-loud, in mixed company. My Great-Great Grandfather was a white supremacist. Captain E.W. … [Read more…]
Carrie Meek is a woman of many firsts. Born in 1926, the grand-daughter of sharecroppers, Meek grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and attended Florida A & M University before heading to Michigan for her master’s degree, something not available to African Americans at Florida colleges at the time. She returned to Florida and taught at … [Read more…]