Edward Waterson- 1985
When I was living with my parents, they would tell me how lucky I was to not live in a time when African-Americans were treated as…as…as basically not human, like we were second class and Whites were first class. Always sitting in the back, getting separated, getting what was left over from the Whites, because we all knew the first class must be treated first before the second class. And the worst thing I heard was that Whites would get away with doing horrible crimes to us, hate crimes basically. But there was a man, a man who didn’t see color, and he wanted change, and my parents stood by that man. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.
Amell Waterson- 2029
My father Braxton Waterson would tell me that, in the late 1900s, racism was an issue between Blacks, Whites, Asians, Latinos and other ethnicities. But most of it was geared to the Blacks. Like being called monkeys or the N word with the E-R, also expecting us to be dumb and uneducated. But if you’d suppressed us from the time we had arrived here and kept us packed in unclean neighborhoods, metaphorically and literally, some of us were going to stay complacent because that’s all we knew. Luckily, a lot of us made it out, though they still labeled us as “hoodlums” through the power of media. With the media, you could make almost anyone look bad-- as nothing more than a statistic. Good thing my dad wasn’t a statistic. If he had been, I wouldn’t be here.
Throughout all the generations, my ancestors dealt with adversity that they had to overcome. They all did so with grace, giving me a chance in this world. In my lifetime, I vow to keep my family going strong-- that is the only way there will be a next generation to spread its blessings.