Make-Up Blog Post due to Crisis Early in the Quarter (discussed via email)

I don’t know much about the Great Migration. We studied it in school, but all I did was memorize facts so I could pass. I grew up with someone named Ida Mae, though, who taught me a lot about the Great Migration. Her great, great, great, grandmother, also named Ida Mae, left Mississippi after one of her family members was almost killed by a white man. Some turkeys went missing, so they moved to Chicago to find safety. Ida Mae told me that this story was the most important narrative in her family history. She said she felt guilty, though, because she grew up on the streets of Kensington. Her ancestors did so much to create a new life for the generations to come, but Ida Mae ended up begging for food, on the street, with me.

            She started getting educated before I did. She was two years older, and graduated from junior high, high school, and college before I stepped foot on the sacred ground. Ida Mae had just graduated from college when Michael Brown was shot to death by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. She remembered her namesake – Ida Mae who lived through the Great Migration – and started protesting. Ida Mae met the creators of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tomenti, and Alicia Garza, in St. Louis as they were raising their voices for all black lives. She sent me texts as she took to the streets, but in a completely different way than we did growing up. She was championing a movement that honored her grandmother and all the women that came before her.