Are we accepted, safe, free, equal, and able to pursue happiness? It starts with You. It starts with Me. It ends with Us. (Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash)writ

Your Story, My Story, Our Society: Heart Truth

I began this book with a story from my past. Maya recounts her story in her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in which she says, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” The beauty of great thinkers, of great difference makers, lies in their ability to tell their stories that reflect and represent the stories of a large swath of humanity.

All of us have stories. We live stories every day; we are the story. We each express story in our unique way. Martin and Maya tell powerful stories, ones with which many identify.

While I have not known what it feels like to be oppressed, ostracized, and hated because of my skin color over the years of my life, I have experienced the emotions resulting from such, a small taste of which I had on that night in 1974 at the Boogie Shack. That and other times I was involved in situations where I felt the bite of bigotry, when I was counseled by church elders to not be in a serious relationship with an oriental girl I was dating or when I was chased by a drunk guy for publicly holding hands with her or when an African American girl and I during freshman year of college decided we would not survive the ridicule of dating one another based on the reactions of peers to our friendship.