The movie Glory came out in December of 1989 to high critical and popular acclaim. The story tells of an all-Black regiment of Civil War soldiers who fought for the Union, and starred Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Matthew Broderick. Dan and I go one night, and as I sit there in the Cineplex getting drawn deeper and deeper into the drama, something hibernating way down deep in me begins to wake that night. I cannot make the feeling go away.
The story in Glory was not an epiphany. It was just a well-told, well-acted depiction of what it was like to have been a slave, to be freed, to fight for a United States that did not see you as equal, and paid you less than a white even though you wore the same uniform. To fight for a nation whose countrymen called you Nigger.
I was not seeing new things on that screen. I was seeing with eyes that could see more clearly, maybe because now that I’d located a place for myself within Blackness—biracial—I could also locate a place for myself in the larger Black narrative.
Light-skinned mixed-race Black with a white-sounding voice? Yes, and
These are your people.
These are my people. These who suffered so that I could live a life and I have lived a far better life than most. A crystal stair.
What you gonna do about it?
In the theater that night I feel empathy for my ancestors, gratitude for the progress made by prior generations of Black Americans, sheepishness, even some shame for my unearned privilege, and an impulse to do something. To continue the progress of the Black community.