How a 16-Year-Old Black Girl Liberated America and Built the ZenFo Pro in the Process

NOTE - Some readers may find the language and content of this post offensive. This is my contribution for Blog Against Racism Day.

Many thanks to Coop over at Wonderland or Not for the head's up.

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Your school is full of niggers, retards, and white trash.

Those words will remain burned into my soul, buried deep in my heart, until the day I die.

A friendly game of two-on-two basketball between preteen boys in rural Virginia. I threw an elbow, finally, at a tall lanky kid who'd been throwing elbows all afternoon. And he lashed out, verbally, completely unaware of the impact his words would have on me decades later.

Niggers, retards, and white trash....

1988, summer of Bush and Dukakis, the Dodgers winning a World Series, the Olympics, and so forth.

The kid who spoke those words went to a local private school, formerly known as Prince Edward Academy - an institution created in the 1950s to continue the tradition of "Separate But Equal" education long after the act had been criminalized by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I was a middle school student at the local public school district, created in the 1960s for a quite different purpose.

His parents were fine, upstanding members of the community. My parents ran a construction company.

This is the story of why I can never, ever forget where I come from, the story of how a black teenage protester helped make me who I am, simply by standing up for what was right.

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Some people idealize rock stars growing up. Some spend their teenage years worshipping actors.

I worshipped a 16-year-old black girl who changed America forever, a teenage firebrand who refused to accept Jim Crow education and organized probably the most important high school student protest in U.S. history.

on April 23, 1951, Barbara Johns and several other students at the all-black R.R. Moton High School managed to trick their principal into leaving campus; then the group forged notes from the principal to teachers, instructing them to bring their classes to the auditorium.

When the school's students showed up, Barbara Johns took the stage and asked the teachers to leave the room; according to legend, most did as they were told.

Though no one remembers what she said exactly, Johns somehow persuaded more than 450 students to strike in protest of the school's pitiful conditions.

The school did not have a gymansium, cafeteria, nor did it have many other amenities. Due to overcrowding, some students attended "class" in an immobile school bus parked outside. The school's requests for additional funds were denied by the all-white school board.

Thus a two-week protest began. And that protest led to a lawsuit against Prince Edward County's school board. And Dorothy E. Davis, et al. versus County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia eventually became one of five cases encompassed in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

My high school alma mater - Prince Edward County High School - was created as a direct result of a separate Supreme Court ruling a decade later.

Of all the degrees, honors, and awards I've ever received, I hold my PECHS diploma dearest to my soul. There are not too many people who can honestly say the records of their school's birth are housed in the National Archives, or that Robert Kennedy personally advocated for its creation.

I owe every piece of intellectual capital I've ever earned to Barbara Johns.

And I will never forget.

Hopefully, you won't either.

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Your school is full of niggers, retards, and white trash.

Yes, it is. And I'm extremely proud of that fact these days.

I wonder what that kid who said those words is doing now? Is he a doctor or a lawyer? Is he some suit and a tie out there? Has he changed his ways, or does he wrap his slurs in the flag with camouflaged bigotry in the form of "Those black welfare mothers...," "Those illegal aliens keep taking our jobs...," or "those people just don't know how to work...?"

I'd like to thank him, one day, for teaching me what it means to be proud of where one comes from and the path that leads to where one wants to go.

I grew up in a world full of niggers, retards, white trash, chinks, nips, beaners, spearchuckers, rednecks, peckerwoods, fags, dykes, homos, kikes, heebs, bleach babies, tar babies, crackers, coons, greasers, spics, queers, snowflakes, trailer trash, mongoloids, yips, and towelheads.

And they are all part of my family, forever. They helped build me up from childhood and I owe them my very soul. That kind of bond can never be broken - not even by the hateful words of some kid on a basketball court.

I am one of the many children of Barbara Johns and her fellow protesters. And we are all a thousand times stronger than Jim Crow could ever have been.

My name is Jason, and I'm a proud graduate of Prince Edward County High School, Class of 1996.

I'm here today because, long ago, a 16-year-old girl had the courage to help set me free.