There’s a woman in the White House, in the heavens and in the mirror.

Ladies, this is your day. Tomorrow will be your day, too. The rest of our days will be our day.

We’ve waited too many days, too many years, too many centuries, too many millennia for this moment. And in this moment, this country and this world must reckon with the truth.

Despite the lies fed to us by men and by the god they created to reinforce their dominance over us, we are fit for positions of authority. We are meant to lead. We are speaking.

We are everything they told us we couldn’t be. Everything they told us we shouldn’t be. Everything they punished us, imprisoned us, raped us and killed us for trying to be.

We are.

Let the entire world see that your diabolical attempts to control and silence us with your patriarchal religions, deny us, not educate us, subjugate us, disenfranchise us, abuse and violate us, and destroy us failed. Miserably, they failed. And miserably, they will continue to fail.

The ascent of the woman — the most resilient, wise, delicate yet durable, tenacious being to ever walk the face of the earth — was never something you could stop. Like us, our ascent is inexorable.

These glass ceilings will be smashed. These mountains will be moved. These laws will be changed. Gender inequality will be challenged and obliterated. The Lord Our God will reclaim Her throne.

Turn tragedy into triumph. Turn pain into prosperity. Turn violence into victory. Turn heads, take names, make history and never back down.

That’s what we’ve always done. And that’s what we will continue to do.

There’s a woman in the White House. Her name is Madam Vice President.

There’s a woman in the heavens. And you will know Her name is The Lord.

There’s a woman in the mirror. I call her Woman Almighty.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

I’ve said I’m heartbroken. I’ve said I’m tired. I’ve said I’m scared. I’ve said I’m outraged.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

I’ve said black lives matter. I’ve said all lives matter. I’ve said no justice, no peace. I’ve said hands up, don’t shoot. I’ve said I can’t breathe.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

I’ve said I’m a proud American. I’ve said God Bless America. I’ve said the Pledge of Allegiance. I’ve sung the National Anthem.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

I’ve said I’ve forgiven this country for the evils of the past and the diabolical treatment of my ancestors, but it’s not their stories that haunt me. No, it’s not history that haunts me. It’s his story. His modern-day story.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

I’ve said white supremacy continues to plague this nation. I’ve said white supremacy is terrorism. I’ve said white supremacists are terrorists.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

I’ve said Lady Liberty is weeping. I’ve said I’ve felt her despair. I’ve said I’ve cried her tears.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

I’ve said Rest In Peace. I’ve said Rest in Power. I’ve said justice will be served this time. I’ve said justice wasn’t served. I’ve said justice will be served this time. I’ve said justice wasn’t served.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

I’ve said I’ve sobbed over a man I never knew, yet, at the same time, I knew all too well.

And all I can say is his name.

His name is Ahmaud Arbery. His name is Trayvon Martin. His name is Eric Gardner. His name is Philando Castile. His name is Freddie Gray. His name is Michael Brown. His name is Tamir Rice. His name is Walter Scott. His name is Stephon Clark. His name is Botham Jean. His name is Terrence Crutcher. His name is Jordan Davis.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

His name is Shot and Killed for Being Too Black, Too Big, Too Scary, Too Loud, Too Suspicious, Too Tall, Too Fast. His name is Mistaken For A Burglar. His name is I Thought His Cell Phone Was A Gun. His name is Wearing A Hoodie. His name is Minding His Business In His Apartment. His Name is Playing Music Too Loudly. His name is I Feared For My Life. His name is Wouldn’t Have Been Killed if He Were White.

I don’t know what else to say besides his name. I feel like I’ve said everything.

His name is Innocent. His name is Didn’t Deserve to Die. His name is Had a Long Life Ahead of Him. His name is Too Young to Die. His name is Dad, Son, Brother, Cousin, Husband, Grandfather, Grandson.

When you say his name, what do you say? What is his name to you?

Is it Suspicious? Is it Guilty? Is it Should’ve Complied? Is it Nigger? Is it Thug? Is it Criminal? Is it Hoodlum? Is it Guilty Until Proven Innocent?

Does he even have a name to you? Do I?

Wearing jeans today in solidarity with sexual assault victims/survivors and victim advocates around the world to challenge victim-blaming attitudes that consistently let rapists off the hook, embolden rapists, silence and shame victims, and further complicate the fight for justice.

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The Denim Day movement began in 1999 when the Italian Supreme Court overturned a rape conviction from 1992 in which a 45-year-old driving instructor raped an 18-year-old girl during a lesson. She was wearing tight jeans at the time of the crime and the court ruled her jeans implied her consent. The next day, female lawmakers showed up to work in jeans to protest the verdict.

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Here’s the truth about victim-blaming: it’s rooted in a myriad of dangerous myths and mistruths.

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The idea that men who sexually violate women do so because they “couldn’t control an urge” or were triggered by a flash of skin or provocative clothing is a flagrant lie. If rapists were really prompted by revealing clothing, only provocatively-dressed women would be raped. But we know that’s not the case. Women get raped wearing sweaters, uniforms, pajamas, burkas, tshirts, shorts, anything. 63,000 children are raped or sexually abused each year. They don’t wear clothes that could possibly arouse someone. Rape is also most prevalent in countries in the Middle East and Africa, where women typically wear veils and/or full body coverings. Rape wouldn’t exist there if clothing was the main cause. And consider history. The vast majority of people who descend from African slaves in America, myself included, have lighter skin than the average sub-Saharan African. That’s because our ancestors were raped by their slave owners. Not because they were “showing skin” but because their slave owners wanted to reinforce their power and dominance over them. That’s what rape is about. Power and control over another human being, misogyny, and hate.

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Rape has existed for thousands of years and long before short skirts, tight jeans, or bikinis were even invented, proving rape is not caused by clothing. The only cause of rape is rapists.

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We need to send a clear, unambiguous message to rapists that they are the only people who will be blamed and held accountable for the egregious crimes that they make the conscious and premeditated decision to commit.

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#DenimDay #DenimDay2020 #SexualAssaultAwarenessMonth #SAAM #EndVictimBlaming #BelieveSurvivors

More than 200 million girls in the world have been cut in the name of fulfilling men. A world more comfortable with maiming women than holding men responsible for their actions is not a world that respects women.

A chewed up piece of gum, a totaled car, a mattress that has already been slept on, a woman who has had sex before marriage. One doesn’t belong. Three of these are items, things, products and objects. One is a human being with thoughts, dreams, a heartbeat, a pulse, hopes, aspirations, and a life. Yet, in many cultures and houses of worship, all four of these are seemingly stuffed into the same category all thanks to purity culture. Purity culture teaches girls:

• the importance of “saving” themselves for marriage so that they’re not seen as damaged goods in the eyes of their husband, their family, the community, the congregation, and God when they finally get married.
• their “value” is inextricably linked to their virginity status meaning their “worth” decreases with every sexual encounter, making them less marketable.
• having sex before marriage deprives their fathers of the joy of “giving away” a “clean,” “unused,” and “undamaged,” daughter.
• sex needs to be as pleasurable as possible for their future husbands, which is why they need to abstain from sex until marriage.
• to dress modestly in order to keep men from committing the sin of lust.
• it’s unnatural for women to have sexual desires.

Purity culture, in so many words, objectifies, dehumanizes, lies to, and shames women for the sake of appeasing men. All of the fundamentals of purity culture have to do with women submitting to a lifestyle of abstinence and sexual suppression to ameliorate men’s personal, social and sex lives. If it’s not for her husband, it’s for her father. If it’s not for her father, it’s for her religious leader (who is likely a man due to pervasive sexist attitudes in houses of faith about women assuming leadership positions). Purity culture reinforces dangerous and oppressive notions that women’s bodies and autonomy don’t belong to them but to men. Women are taught that the honor of their family lies on their shoulders and in their vaginas. They’re deemed responsible for their purity as well as men’s.

Let’s walk through this again. This time, with an addendum on each bullet point explaining why this language is sexist, irresponsible, and ignorant.

Purity culture teaches girls:

• the importance of “saving” themselves for marriage so that they’re not seen as damaged goods in the eyes of their husband, their family, the community, the congregation, and God when they finally get married. Women are not goods, they’re people. Goods are disposable inanimate objects. Women are living, breathing beings. Equating women to used cars, hand-me-downs, and thrift store items is inhumane, abhorrent, and downright irresponsible. This comparison of women to things has paved the way for systematic sexism to flourish, leaving women vulnerable to violence, objectification and discrimination.
• their “value” is inextricably linked to their virginity status meaning their “worth” decreases with every sexual encounter, making them less marketable. Women don’t have “value” or “worth” and neither do men. People don’t come with price tags, things do. Language like this has cost thousands of women their lives and their freedom. It has subjected girls and women to invasive and degrading procedures like virginity testing. During a virginity test, a doctor inserts two fingers inside a girl’s vagina to determine if her hymen is still intact. Governments and agencies like the World Health Organisation have slammed these tests as scientifically-invalid (since a girl’s hymen can break without having engaged in sexual intercourse), discriminatory, traumatic and cruel. Girls and women whose hymens are found to be torn are at risk of losing out on job opportunities or being fired, being ostracized from school, being publicly shamed, being imprisoned or getting killed. When virginity is prioritized and revered more so than women, we’ve got a human rights violation on our hands and purity culture has blood on it.
• having sex before marriage deprives their fathers of the joy of “giving away” a “clean,” “unused,” and “undamaged,” daughter. We’ve normalized the ritual of fathers “giving away” their daughters at wedding ceremonies. The father proudly walks his daughter down the aisle to her soon-to-be husband who is standing at the altar patiently awaiting her arrival. The officiant asks “who gives this woman away?” to which the father of the bride declares “I do.” He then places his daughter’s hand in the groom’s as he figuratively and literally passes her off to another man as to say “She was mine. Now she’s yours.” It seems innocuous but is it? What are we really implying when women are subjects of a transaction on their wedding day? That women are objects that can be passed around? That women should always be under the authority and control of a man?
• sex needs to be as pleasurable as possible for their future husbands, which is why they need to abstain from sex until marriage. Enhancing male pleasure is one reason female genital mutilation exists. The practice of partially or completely removing girls’ genitalia is nothing short of a human rights violation and is an act of gender-based violence. The goal of FGM is to prevent pubescent girls from having premarital sex and to improve the sensation of sex for her future husband. During the procedure, some circumsisers will sew a girl’s labia back together and leave a tiny hole for urine. Once that girl gets married and has sex for the first time, her husband will take a razor blade to her genitalia to remove the stitches, causing many FGM survivors to bleed excessively and sometimes, to death. Some of the other potential side effects of FGM are hemorrhage, fistula, permanent loss of bladder control, and paralysis. More than 200 million girls in the world have been cut in the name of fulfilling men, which brings me to my next point. Women don’t exist to please men. No ifs, and, or buts about it. A common justification for endorsing female purity is “a man doesn’t want to be with a woman who has been with everybody.” Ditto. Women don’t want to be with men who have been with everybody either yet purity isn’t emphasized to boys the way it is to girls. Boys aren’t raised to think their chastity is a prized possession that completes them and no holy ritual has ever called for boys to “prove their virginity” for any purpose. And I’m not saying they should. I’m saying no one, male or female, should. Also, people often conflate premarital sex with prosmiscuity. Having sex before marriage doesn’t automatically mean you’ve “been with everybody.” Maybe you’ve had sex with one other person or maybe you’ve slept with dozens of people. Regardless, having sex doesn’t make you filthy or immoral and it certainly doesn’t define you.
• to dress modestly in order to keep men from committing the sin of lust. Women aren’t responsible for controlling men’s sexual urges. Men are. There are practices throughout the world, such as breast ironing in Cameroon, that cater to this menancing mindset. Instead of demanding men not to prey on women, the focus and responsibility of moral sanctity is pinned on women. Women are forced to hide their bodies and are disfigured to decrease their appeal to the opposite sex. Language like this enables men to blame women for their indecencies and exonerates them from accountability in cases of abuse, rape and sexual assault. A world more comfortable with maiming women than holding men responsible for their actions is not a world that respects women.
• it’s unnatural for women to have sexual desires. This is just wildly untrue. While there are differences between male and female sex drives, women still enjoy and crave sex just as much as men do. We, as animals, have an innate desire to have sex, whether for reproduction, pleasure or relaxation. Sexual proclivity isn’t just a “man thing.” It’s a human thing.

Ultimately, purity culture is laced with sexist lies that are geared toward controlling women and their bodies, decisions, futures, and lives. Time to throw it out. Sexism really shouldn’t exist so comfortably in religion, of all things.

It’s been one year since that deadly clash between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. I remember becoming nauseated as I watched the news coverage of the traumatic events that were unfolding just an hour from my hometown. My phone was blowing up with twitter alerts from all of the major news networks. It started with “Virginia is under a state of emergency” to “One person is dead after a driver plowed through a crowd of counter-protesters.” I was simultaneously receiving texts from friends like “what the fuck is happening in your state right now?” I tried but I couldn’t find the words to explain to them what the fuck was happening in my state. I just texted back, with tears from frustration rolling down my face, “I don’t know. I’m disgusted but not surprised.”

Having grown up in the Greater Richmond, Virginia area, which is the Capital of the Confederacy, I’m no stranger to white supremacy. I always knew there were chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups in the area. I had classmates, even people who I considered my friends, who donned the Confederate flag on their t-shirts, their notebooks, their cars in the name of “heritage.” I had teachers and administrators who undoubtedly had personal and familia ties to the Klan. I couldn’t go to the dermatologist, the eye doctor, or my favorite dancewear store without passing Monument Avenue, a famous street in Richmond flanked with statues of Confederate generals.

So, no, I wasn’t surprised to see white supremacists and Nazis descend upon a town in Virginia, a state that is complicit with white supremacy and glorifies the Confederacy. In fact, I’d probably be surprised if that rally didn’t happen in Virginia. But what did surprise me was the complacency of “white moderates” (as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to them as in his Letter from Birmingham Jail) in the aftermath of the riot. In the days following the rally, I listened to white coworkers, white Facebook friends, white neighbors, and a white president fail to unreservedly condemn the actions and rhetoric of white supremacists, and even go as far as to make excuses for them. I listened to President Donald Trump call the participants of the rally “very fine people” and coworkers defend them because they were “just exercising their First Amendment Right” and “they didn’t do anything legally wrong.” I read countless Facebook statuses in which people equated white supremacists to counter-protesters and echoed the sentiments of President Trump saying there was “blame on both sides.”

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963

They are the “white moderates” Dr. King warned us about 55 years ago. White moderates are, as described by Dr. King, white people of goodwill. They recognize injustice, terrorism, and hatred toward their colored counterparts but turn a blind eye and a deaf ear because it’s not their fight. They saw nothing wrong with hundreds of men and women parading throughout Charlottesville with torches as they chanted obscenities about Blacks and Jews and demanded their mass annihilation because they legally had the right to do so, as if morality shouldn’t take precedent over legality. They watched the same news coverage I watched on August 12, 2017; heard the same racist rhetoric I heard; saw the same offensive emblems I saw; viewed the same footage of a car driven by a white supremacist plowing into a crowd of counter-protesters, sending dozens of people several feet into the air only to crash back down on their bones, and killing Heather Heyer, yet didn’t bat an eye. They compared white supremacists to the counter-protesters who refused to give hate a place to exist comfortably and flourish in a nation as great, powerful and influential as the United States. Instead of choosing sides, they stayed neutral. Instead of condemning, they condoned. Instead of standing up to, they complied with. Instead of shaming, they made excuses for.

What the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally revealed to me was the amount of white moderates in America. To know there are people in your country who despise you and abhor your existence based on the color of your skin and their own ignorance is one thing. To know there are “good” people in your country who aren’t willing to call evil “evil” or stand up for your basic human rights to live free of hatred or fear in the only country that you’ve ever known and loved is another.

“The Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963.

The biggest threat to our country isn’t white supremacists and Nazis or any group of people who harbor malice and animosity toward others. It’s the people who think there’s a “more convenient season” to fight bigotry. It’s the people who prefer “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” It’s the people who say “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.” It’s the people of goodwill who stand by in the face of villainy and call it “good.”

Rape culture isn’t the explicit acceptance, celebration, or approval of rape, like many critics of the phrase would have you believe. No one is saying our culture outwardly applauds rape. But our society does shrug off, normalize, and tolerate certain actions and beliefs — from locker room talk to rape jokes — that justify men mistreating women. Rape culture is the condoning of certain behaviors and attitudes from men toward women, as well as the dismissal of those behaviors and attitudes because “that’s just how men joke” or “boys will be boys” or “that’s just what men do” or “men just can’t control themselves” that excuse and exonerate men and lay the groundwork for the justification of violence toward women.

People, especially children, naturally have a tendency to test the waters and see what they can get away with. So when boys are growing up and they hear and see men violate, degrade, make unwanted sexual advances toward, joke about assaulting or raping, and talk down to women, and they notice that no one reprimands those men, and they watch people go as far as to excuse those men just because they’re men, then they assume they can mimic those behaviors without any type of repercussions. They also assume that’s how they’re supposed to act as men. Some boys test the waters more than others. But that behavior is learned. No one is born a rapist or a misogynist.

And when it comes to excusatory statements like “men can’t control themselves”, here’s what I want to know: what is it that men “can’t” control? An urge to degrade, abuse, rape, violate, attack, beat, kill and devalue women? They can’t control an urge to treat women like property and objects? They can’t control an urge to be the antithesis of a decent human being? Are you really exempting men from basic human decency because they have more testosterone in their bodies than women? Are you really holding men to a lower morality standard because they supposedly have a more intense sex drive than women? Do you really think that a man’s increased libido — and a woman’s outfit (even though it has been proven time and time again that men who rape will rape anything with a vagina, regardless of clothing) — is an excuse to violate someone in the most vile, despicable, inhumane, aggressive, and demeaning way?

And are you so stupid to believe that men “can’t” control themselves? Perhaps it’s not about a lack of control but a REFUSAL to control themselves because they’ve been enabled by a society that dismisses rape and pins it on the victims’ shoulders because “women should know better than to wear seductive clothing around men” or “women should know better than to walk alone” or “little girls should know better than to be alone with a grown man, even if that man is a dad, step-dad, teacher, babysitter, pastor, family member, etc. who they trust” or “women should know better than to go into their boss’s office alone” or “that’s just what men do” or “boys will be boys.”

STOP. ENABLING. PREDATORY. BEHAVIOR. There is NO EXCUSE for rape and sexual assault. NONE.

And another thing: if you feel a need to reinforce your “power” and “authority” over a woman to feel validated as a man, you are the furthest thing from a man.

No man is born thinking women are inferior. Misogyny is taught. It’s taught in schools, in churches and houses of faith, in the media, in Hollywood, at home. It’s not always an explicit announcement. But it’s telling women to be subservient in marriage and telling men they have authority over their wives. It’s religious leaders telling battered women to “be better wives” to make the abuse stop. It’s the belief that a woman’s only purpose in life is to become a wife and mother, which is why 700 million girls across the world are forced to marry once they get their period. It’s the song ‘Blurred Lines.’ It’s male musicians referring to women as bitches, whores and cunts. It’s the notion that a woman secretly means “yes” after saying “no.” It’s the scene in “The Notebook” when Noah threatens to kill himself in front of Allie because she turned him down. It’s romanticizing abusive behavior. It’s calling emotional men “pussies” or “bitches” or any other derogatory word used toward women. It’s rapists being exonerated in countries in Africa and the Middle East if they marry their victim, and being granted the right to share custody with their victim in 7 states right here in the USA. It’s the belief that women “owe” men sex after they do something nice for them. It’s teasing respectful boyfriends/husbands and telling them they’re “whipped” and not blinking an eye at controlling or abusive behavior. It’s teaching girls how to turn a guy down easily instead of teaching boys that they’re not entitled to a girl and if she says ‘no’, that’s not a license to attack her. It’s the perpetuation of the notion that there is shared responsibility when a man makes the decision to rape a woman, violate her humanity, and cause her psychological, physical, emotional, and mental trauma.

If all of this can be taught, it can be untaught. Change the narrative. Words have the power to change the world. And so do we.

Growing up a Christian, I was constantly told my main purpose in life was to become a godly woman. A godly woman obeys her husband and respects his authority over her. She isn’t quarrelsome. She doesn’t speak out of turn. She allows her husband to take control in the relationship. She doesn’t work outside of the home because providing for the family is exclusively the man’s role. But as a child, none of that resonated well with me. I had questions about many passages in the Bible, especially the ones that seemed to denigrate and devalue women. Isn’t it sexist that men can speak in church and women can’t? Will my future husband really have authority over me? What if I want to work when I get older? Does that make me less of a woman if I don’t become a homemaker? Was I really created from a man’s rib? But I never asked those questions because I didn’t want my inquisition to be mistaken for heresy. I just accepted what was written as I was taught good Christians do.

With age, I became less reticent. I unabashedly started asking questions — the tough ones that most Christians were too uncomfortable to discuss. My intent was not to indict Christianity or attack the institution of religion. I just wanted to challenge others to think for themselves instead of blindly accepting ideologies that derive from an extremely misogynistic society that existed more than 3,500 years ago. Although we’ve evolved in the past 3,500 years, our modern society is plagued by patriarchy, and women’s progress is still being stifled by the antiquated religious beliefs that women are inferior to men, irrational, hypersensitive and weak.

In most parts of the world, current laws do not permit a non-virgin bride to stand on her father’s doorstep as the townsmen gather to stone her to death, but a repugnant number of women are still being beaten, threatened and killed by their husbands under the guise of religion. Women are no longer being ostracized from the church while menstruating but we’re being taxed for our feminine necessities. Not to mention, affordable childcare is not ubiquitously accessible, we’re being chastised for breastfeeding our children in public, and our reproductive rights are being controlled by lawmakers — 90% of whom are men. Rape victims are not being forced to marry their perpetrators anymore, but they’re being blamed for the crime committed against them, while their rapists aren’t being held accountable for the irreparable damage they’ve done. Wives are now allowed to have careers and earn an income but their work isn’t as valued as their husbands’ — and it shows on their paychecks. Women are still fighting every day to prove that we’re deserving of basic human rights because — just like men — we are humans who were created through the fertilization of an egg by sperm.

We’re not the product of someone’s rib. We’re not objects or trophies sitting idly on a shelf waiting to be polished and shown off by men. We’re not here for men’s entertainment or convenience. We refuse to believe we are secondary citizens of the world. We’re not emotionally, physically and mentally weaker than men. Our womanhood is not defined by our relationship status or whether we have children. We do not accept that our role in marriage is confined to being a mother and a wife. We are not going to remain voiceless. Our sole purpose in life is not to nurture a man. We will seek careers and provide for ourselves. We will not disparage our intellect to be seen as less of a threat to men, and we will not coddle fragile masculinity. We will never conform to, defend or normalize the subjugation of women. And the truth is, Jesus Christ never did either. He spent much of His life advocating for the justice and humanity of women. But that’s often omitted from church sermons. Maybe that’s because the majority of preachers are men.

During President Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure, the United States of America was unequivocally transformed. The uphill and incessant battle that is the fight for social justice and equality was met by President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden with tenacity, dignity and passion.

Everything from marriage equality for the LGBTQ community, women’s rights and the fight to end sexual assault, and religious freedom were put on the forefront, forcing Americans to acknowledge and discuss the disparities that exist in many realms of this country.

But the most historic legacy fulfilled by President Obama was becoming the first African American to serve as President of the United States of America.

As a 16-year-old black girl, I was ecstatic- but to be honest, a bit skeptical- to see a black man run for president in 2008. I was optimistic that that would become a reality in America one day, but I never fathomed it would happen in my lifetime. I knew racism, both subtle and overt, still existed in America and often reared its ugly face. I knew there was a hefty portion of Americans out there who still believed black people were inferior and more incompetent than white people, and because of that, they wouldn’t dare to even consider a black man as any kind of authority figure to them. And they would raise hell if he were elected. And as a junior in high school, that scared me. But my fears dissipated as I watched more and more Americans of all skin colors, religious beliefs, socioeconomic statuses, ages, genders and sexual orientations join Barack Obama’s support base.

With every speech and every rally and every call for “hope” and “change,” I saw Barack Obama galvanize millions of Americans to speak up for the voiceless, to defend and protect the rights of all Americans, and to be bold, strong and empowered in the fight for equality. He emboldened a spirit of togetherness and unity among all Americans.

And although I was too young to vote in the 2008 election, I was one of Obama’s biggest allies. From volunteering at Obama for America, making calls at local phone banks, and adamantly defending Obama when my fellow classmates cast aspersions on him, I was his right-hand woman. I was ready.

Long before Barack Obama took the stage in Chicago on November 4, 2008 to address the American people for the first time as our President-Elect, I vowed to attend his inauguration.

And on January 20, 2009, I kept my promise.

My father, brother, two sisters and I traveled from our small, conservative town in the Richmond, Virginia-area to Vienna, Virginia- just outside of the nation’s capital.

At 3 o’clock in the morning, we scurried to be one of the first people on the metro to Washington, D.C. The metro car was filled with an array of Americans: black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, young, old, Democrat, Republican. Although we were nothing more than strangers to one another, we laughed, danced and sang together as if we were one big family. The euphoria in the metro car was undeniable.

Once we arrived in Washington, D.C., we trekked from the metro station to the National Mall. As I marched toward the Capitol Building, a familiar image flashed in my mind. It was a black-and-white image that I had only seen in textbooks and in documentaries on the History Channel.

It was the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.

And among the crowd were my grandparents: my grandfather, a World War II veteran and Tuskegee Airman, and my grandmother, an elementary school teacher.

They traveled from New Jersey to Washington, D.C. to join more than 200,000 Americans- both white and black- in the rally.

Led by prominent civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they took to the streets of D.C. to demand political, economic and social equality for African Americans, as the Jim Crow laws were still in effect, housing and job discrimination were still potent, and police brutality was an imminent threat.

It was a pivotal moment for the civil rights movement. And America.

However, none of the participants of that rally knew what the future would hold for the U.S. They had no idea if the demands they were marching for were remotely attainable for a country that was founded on the oppression, enslavement, ridicule and discrimination of black people. And they certainly could not have predicted that, just 46 years later, their children and grandchildren would convene in the same city to watch a black man recite the Presidential Oath of Office.

But they still marched. They marched for their children. They marched for their grandchildren. They marched for their descendants for generations to come.

They marched for us.

So in return, 1.8 million Americans marched on January 20, 2009 to see the first African American be sworn into office as the 44th President of the United States of America.

We marched for them.

But our days of marching can’t end here. Our efforts to protect the unalienable rights of all Americans can’t cease now. We may not know what the United States of America will look like in 46 years, but don’t let that uncertainty frighten you or hinder your efforts to bring about change in this country. Let that uncertainty be your motivation. Let the image of what you want this nation to look like decades from now captivate you. Be inspired by your aspirations for your children and your children’s children to live in a nation where they aren’t bound by the color of their skin, their gender, their physical abilities, whom they love, how they identify, or which god they choose to worship. Wake up everyday with the unwavering hope that the United States of America will one day be unrecognizable to those who once were rejected, hated and brutalized for being who they are.

Make no mistake about it, this country has come a long way. But it has been- and remains- a treacherous journey. We’ve stumbled upon road blocks, prolonged red lights, traffic jams and detours.

But we’ll get there. I promise you, we’ll get there. We’ll reach our destination. No matter how long it takes.

And I know you’re tired. I am, too. And I know my grandparents were, too. But they didn’t give up on America. And because of their relentless drive, I- a 25-year-old black woman- have opportunities that they couldn’t even dream of.

So we have to keep going. The torch has been passed down to us. We have to press onward and continue the fight for an equal and inclusive America. Why? Because our descendants are counting on us. What other reason do you need?

March on.