DEEP WATERS

It's been exactly two weeks since Michael Brown , age 18, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.  Other than a few discussions at home with my family, I haven't talked much about this volatile situation. I've wanted to share about it here in Deep Waters , but I've wanted to speak intelligently about it. There's just so much I don't know about this case right now. And then I received an email from a sweet sister-friend that told me she'd checked my blog for my reaction to the Ferguson crisis. She encouraged me to "weigh-in" here, and I knew I needed to break my silence. I feel like I did when I wrote about the Trayvon Martin crisis back in May 2012 in "Our Sons Are Trayvon." I feel the way I did when I wrote about the verdict in the Zimmerman trial back in July 2013 in "Zimmerman Found Not Guilty/The Church Found Guilty" . I feel like there's so much I don't know. I wasn...

If I know one thing for sure, it's that racial issues in the United States are still alive and well. And although African Americans now have the right to vote, own property, attend desegregated public schools, etc. etc... I still find myself saying every so often - "Wow, and it's 2013." Take this story, for example: One of my friends, who happens to be African American too, took her two daughters to see "The Butler" last week. Her daughters were deeply moved and amazed at the narrative of history being played out before them. They had learned very little of this history in school, and they wondered why. I too have questioned this lack of the "whole-story" in our country's history lessons. I think the answer is found in the rest of this story. So... one of my friend's daughter's plans to try out for a part in her private school's production of "The Great Gatsby." In order to prepare the students for tryouts,...