A MESSAGE FROM THE PUBLISHER
By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.
This past Labor Day weekend, my family gathered for our every two-year family reunion, which this time was held in Columbia, South Carolina.
I must admit something bothered me. The numbers are not what they used to be. Fewer people are coming. Fewer young people seem connected to the tradition. And apparently, we are not alone.
There were about four other families holding reunions in the same park. At one point, we were asked to come together for a group photograph. And as we talked, I heard the same concern from family after family:
How do we keep our young people involved? That question has stayed with me. Because maybe the problem is bigger than getting young folks to come to a park, put on a family T-shirt, eat some barbecue and pose for a picture.
Maybe we have failed to explain why the reunion matters. A family reunion is not simply a gathering. It is a classroom.
It is where Big Mama’s stories meet the grandchildren’s questions. It is where names on old photographs become real people. It is where somebody learns that the blood flowing through their veins comes from people who refused to surrender.
And Lord knows, we come from some survivors. Our ancestors survived the Middle Passage. They survived enslavement. They survived Jim Crow. They survived lynchings, segregation and being told where they could live, where they could work, where they could go to school, where they could sit and even which door they could enter.
Yet somehow, they educated children when education was denied them. They built businesses when banks wouldn’t lend to them. They built churches, schools, newspapers, colleges and communities. They voted when voting could cost them their jobs—and sometimes their lives. They survived. And then they taught the next generation how to survive. That’s the part we cannot afford to lose.
Today, we are watching another troubling period in America. We see efforts to restrict how Black history is taught and remembered. We see attacks on institutions we once believed were secure. We see political division tearing at communities and families. We see violence that has become so common that another mass shooting barely has time to leave the headlines before another tragedy replaces it. And sometimes we act as though we have never faced trouble before.
Oh, yes, we have. Our people have looked trouble squarely in the face for generations. The difference is that our ancestors understood something we may be forgetting: You don’t survive alone. You survive through family. You survive through community. You survive through faith. You survive by educating your children. You survive by knowing where you came from so nobody else can tell you who you are.
That is why I’m beginning to think we need a different kind of family reunion. Maybe Black America needs one big family reunion. Not just to eat. Not just to dance. Not just to take pictures. We need to sit our children down and tell them the stories. Tell them about the great-grandmother who cleaned somebody else’s house so her children could attend college. Tell them about the grandfather who couldn’t vote but made certain his children registered. Tell them about the Black businesses that survived because Black people deliberately supported them. Tell them about the teachers who taught our children with secondhand books but gave them first-class dreams. Tell them about the people whose names will never appear in a history book, but whose sacrifices made our lives possible.
And we have to tell those stories in a way our young people can receive them. We cannot simply hand them history like medicine and say, “Take this because it’s good for you.” We’ve got to make it something they can taste. Let them taste the richness of their history. Let them digest the courage. Let them feed on the faith. Let them understand that Black history is not simply a story about what was done to us.
It is the story of what we did despite what was done to us. That’s a different lesson. And it may be exactly the lesson our children need right now. As another election approaches and America wrestles with who it wants to become, our young people must understand that they did not arrive at this moment empty-handed.
They inherited something. They inherited struggle, yes. But they also inherited strength. They inherited ingenuity. They inherited faith. They inherited courage. They inherited the ability to organize, build, vote, protest, pray, educate and overcome.
And no administration, no politician and no rewriting of a textbook can take that inheritance away, unless we fail to pass it down.
So next Labor Day, when we call everybody together for the family reunion, maybe our first question shouldn’t be: “Who’s bringing the potato salad?” Maybe it ought to be:
“Who’s bringing the children?”
Because if we can get them to the table, perhaps we can feed them something far more important than food. We can feed them their history. We can feed them their identity. We can feed them the knowledge that whatever America throws at them, they come from people who have already proven that we know how to survive.
And once they understand that, maybe they’ll understand why the family reunion was never just a reunion. It was preparation for the next generation.
And family, right now, we need to get together.