My father grew up in a time when black children meant nothing to America. Most of them, including him, didn’t have a birth certificate. Their care, their education, their self-worth was optional. Whether they lived or died was insignificant to the state. For the most part, their existence centered around work and church. And even the church taught them that they were “wretches” and “sinners undone,” black children of Ham who, without a forgiving God, had no hope in this life or the next. Children of my father’s generation were taught that dreams were a waste of time. Schooling happened only
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