In a few short weeks I will be starting a Bridge to PhD program studying U.S. History at the University of Virginia! Throughout my application process, I wrote numerous essays to express my desire and readiness to pursue graduate level studies in History. One of those essays, my favorite to write, asked me to write an autobiographical sketch sharing my personal journey to the point of applying to study History at the graduate level. I have shared it below.
Many of the people who have had the greatest influence on my life are people that I have never met. Their stories are woven into mine like the intricate patterns of a patchwork quilt or a swath of kente cloth. As a child, I eagerly read about heroines like Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells. I remember being in awe of how they shone a light on injustice, even at the risk of their personal safety. I wanted to embody that kind of courage; to tell stories that would inspire others to action. Growing up in a rural town in Arkansas, I saw southern history represented in a way that romanticized the antebellum south as a place where fallen confederate soldiers were heroic victims and enslaved people had been content with their lot in life. The dissonance between this ahistorical narrative and my burgeoning knowledge of Black history laid the groundwork for interests that would continue to take shape throughout my education.
As a college student, my passion for Black history expanded to include Africa and the diaspora. I began by taking an African history course taught by a Ghanaian professor. Every week, in class, figures like Kwame Nkrumah and Yaa Asantewaa came to life as three-dimensional beings with rich and dynamic legacies influenced but not dominated by Euro-centric views. I valued being taught this history with more nuance and depth than I had previously experienced. A year after graduating college, while working on my master’s degree, I jumped on an opportunity to spend a summer in Ghana. I remember so many details about the day trip I took to Cape Coast Castle. When I close my eyes, I can still smell the salty sea air; I feel the claustrophobia of the prison cells; I hear the echoes of the past. After touring the fortress, I stood in the "door of no return" looking out at the ocean, wondering if perhaps some of my ancestors had passed through those wooden arches. That curiosity sent me on a research journey into my family history for the next several years. More than once, while working, I would look up from an 18th century will or slave schedule and find that I had stayed up until two or three-o-clock in the morning searching for the next piece of the puzzle. What began as a hazy list of names and dates gradually solidified into verifiable events, timelines, and stories about my ancestors and the lives they led. Even as I write this, their names come to mind one after another. Reuben Bell, my 3rd great-grandfather, was born enslaved but registered to vote in1867; Jerry Hughes, my 2nd great-grandfather, was born a few years after emancipation and would go on to acquire a Ph.D. from Morehouse; Lucille Pulliam, my great-grandmother, survived the reign of terror by moving her entire family to the Midwest and then to California during the great migration. Each new name and story felt like a vibrant string in a tapestry that I had never seen before, yet was somehow familiar. During my genealogy research, I began charting my course back to graduate school for a Ph.D. in history when the opportunity to spend more time in Africa tempted me to delay for a little longer. When I joined the Peace Corps, I knew I wanted to go to Rwanda. I had spent a short time there during my college years and the experience was compelling enough to draw me back for a two-year period. Something about being a Black American living in Africa forced me to wrestle with my identity and history in new and challenging ways. I was disconcerted by how little those in my host country knew about the diaspora. I will never forget observing a 7th-grade history class where the lesson pulled from the textbook was "benefits of the transatlantic slave trade for Africa." Alarmed at the misguided textbook, I assembled some supplemental instruction on Black history for the whole school community. Using a mix of English and the native language, Kinyarwanda, I spent hours explaining the middle passage, slavery in the southern United States, and some of the pivotal Black figures in the Civil Rights movement. A few short weeks after introducing Black History Month at my school, my Peace Corps service was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. I returned to the United States in 2020 energized by my experiences abroad and galvanized by the resurgent BLM protests often taking place around symbols of the confederacy that I had grown up around. I found ways to contribute through writing, protest, and political action. Ultimately, I knew academia was the space in which I wanted to liberate Black lives through the emancipation of Black history.
From Arkansas to the African continent and back to America, I have crossed the globe many times to arrive where I started; a Black woman, eager to reveal the kind of stories that have inspired me my whole life but that I had to search long and hard to find. As I write this statement, I periodically look down at a simple brass bracelet on my left wrist that I purchased on my first day in Ghana several years ago. Etched in the center is a small bird with its neck sloping gracefully toward the back of its body. Later during that trip, I would discover the bird is an Adinkra symbol, Sankofa, meaning "to return and get it" or "to remember, reclaim, and learn from the past.” A history Ph.D. is the next chapter in my story, but it will be annotated by the lives of those who have gone before me; from famous figures to members of my family tree. As I take this step, I aspire to follow in their path, continue their work, and honor their legacies.