What does my melanin represent? What's the story?

My message to my young, black people—the three who reside under my roof. The melanin in my skin says I am a representation of a strong, tough, overcoming legacy. My people have faced the worse atrocities humans can bear and still… HERE WE ARE. The literal PULSE of the NATION. We are not VICTIMS.

We have no desire to erase the history of this country as it relates to the Black experience. NO WAY.. It’s too important to who you are now. It tells the story of the melanin in my skin.

The melanin makes me PROUD. Look where we came from. Look at what we have endured to arrive at this place. Is our position perfect? Nope. Nothing in life is. Even as I sit here in my house where I reign supreme, everything is not exactly the way I want it to be. But still, as Dr. Maya Angelou says, You, I, We rise. Not as victims. Not powerless. Not undeserving BUT possessors of an ancestry filled with over-comers.

Whips and chains, lynchings, fire bombs, segregation, separation, high incarceration, low income, no income, beatings, brutality, firehoses, boycotts, Jim Crow, voter suppression, discrimination, racism, none of these things were MIGHTY ENOUGH TO kill the SPIRIT of our people.

So, my sons and daughter, your life is FULL of promise and potential. Always walk proudly and carry your head high BECAUSE of the MELANIN in your skin. The world is WIDE open to you. Whatever your mind dares to dream, you can fulfill. Remember, YOU hold the pulse of the NATION.

You carry that surviving, overcoming, by any means necessary, dream of the future, always rising, MELANIN running through your veins.

That’s the message. That’s what YOUR melanin represents.