Equiano. Wells-Barnett. Holder.

O, ye nominal Christians! … Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends, to toil for your luxury and lust of gain? … Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely this is a new refinement in cruelty … and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery. Olaudah Equiano, 1789.

Our watchword has been “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense. Neither do brave men and women stand by and see such things done without compunction of conscience, nor read of them without protest. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1900.

The struggle continues. After the 15th Amendment recognized the African American right to vote in 1870, some states responded by using violent intimidation, poll taxes and literacy tests as barriers to voting. Today those laws have mutated into voter suppression efforts that target low income and minority communities with disheartening effectiveness. I fight for the real enfranchisement of black people. Eric Holder Jr., 2020.