Sometimes the sky becomes the only place left to prove you belong.
Bessie Coleman grew up in Texas at a time when both race and gender limited opportunity. When she dreamed of becoming a pilot, every flight school in the United States refused to teach her.
She was Black. She was a woman.
So Bessie Coleman did something extraordinary.
She learned French and traveled to France, where she earned her pilot’s license in 1921, becoming the first African American and Native American woman in the world to hold an international pilot’s license.
When she returned to the United States, crowds came to watch her fly. Coleman became a famous stunt pilot, performing breathtaking aerial tricks that left audiences amazed.
But she used her platform for something deeper.
She refused to perform at air shows that did not allow Black audiences to attend. To her, flight was not just entertainment.
It was dignity.
There is a verse in Isaiah that says, “They will soar on wings like eagles.”
Bessie Coleman lived that promise with courage and determination.
Sometimes the first person to break a barrier must build the runway herself.
Breadcrumb The world may close doors in front of you.
Bessie Coleman did not accept the doors that were closed.
She crossed an ocean instead.
Sometimes God places a dream in your heart that cannot grow where you started.
And sometimes the path forward begins with the courage to leave the ground.
Steps From Our Sisters Honoring the Women Who Marched Before Us
(c.1530 – 1603) Sometimes history remembers kings. But occasionally the sea belongs to a queen. Grace O’Malley, known in Ireland as Gráinne Mhaol, was born into a powerful maritime clan along Ireland’s western coast. From a young age she refused the expectations placed upon women of her time. She learned the sea instead. Grace commanded ships, led sailors, and controlled trade routes along the rugged Irish coastline. Her fleets became legendary, and her name was spoken with both admiration and caution. When English forces threatened her family and territory, Grace O’Malley did something almost unheard of. She sailed to England and met Queen Elizabeth I face to face. The two women spoke as equals, negotiating the freedom of O’Malley’s son and the restoration of her lands. There is a verse in Psalm 93 that says, “The Lord reigns… the seas have lifted up their voice.” Grace O’Malley’s life seemed to echo that image—strong, fearless, and unafraid of powerful waters. Sometimes courage does not wait for permission. Sometimes it sets sail. Strength often begins with refusing the limits others place on you. Grace O’Malley was expected to live quietly. Instead she commanded ships and negotiated with queens. Her story reminds us that leadership can emerge from the most unexpected places. Sometimes the waves that try to block your path are the very waters meant to carry you forward. Steps From Our Sisters Honoring the Women Who Marched Before Us
She carried many lives before the world called her a poet. Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Annie Johnson. The name Maya was derived from her brother Bailey who just could not pronounce her name and would call her “My Sister” . It morphed into Maya which stuck. Angelou came from her first husband, Enistasios Angelos, a Greek sailor. She adapted the surname slightly to Angelou when she began performing as a dancer and singer so it would sound more lyrical on stage.
She was raised in the segregated South where dignity was often denied but never fully destroyed. Her childhood held both silence and survival, experiences that would later shape the voice the world came to know. She refused to stay one thing. Angelou worked as a streetcar conductor, dancer, singer, journalist, and organizer long before the world recognized her literary voice. Her life moved through many stages, but each experience added depth to the perspective she would later bring to her writing. Her voice extended beyond stages and books. During the Civil Rights Movement she worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, helping organize, write, and advocate for justice. In 1964, after years living and working in Africa, Angelou returned to the United States at the invitation of Malcolm X to help him build a new civil rights organization focused on global Black unity. Before that work could fully take shape, Malcolm X was assassinated. The loss shook her deeply, but Angelou continued writing, speaking, and advocating for dignity and equality. Only a few years later the movement suffered another devastating loss when Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, Angelou’s own birthday. Still she wrote. In 1969, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings gave voice to stories the world rarely allowed Black women to tell out loud. Stories of trauma, identity, and the quiet power of rising again. Her words did not whisper. They lifted. As she once wrote: “Still I rise.” Three simple words that carried generations. But the voice the world came to love was not always easy for her to use. As a young girl Maya Angelou endured a violent assault. When she spoke the truth about what had happened, the man responsible was later killed. In her young mind she believed her words had caused it. So she stopped speaking. For years she lived in silence, afraid that her voice carried too much power. It was a teacher, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, who slowly led her back to language through books, poetry, and the music of words. The voice that would one day move a nation had to be reclaimed first. In 1993 she stood at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton and read On the Pulse of Morning, becoming only the second poet in American history to deliver a poem at a presidential inauguration. But her greatest legacy was simpler. She gave language to survival. Her life echoes a truth older than any poem: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair.” — 2 Corinthians 4:8
I once saw Maya Angelou in concert. In a packed 1000 plus seat theater she sang “God Sent a Rainbow” without a microphone. The room fell completely silent as her voice carried to every corner. It felt as if the walls themselves were listening. In that moment I understood something about courage. Voices like Maya Angelou’s do more than speak. They remind us that we are not meant to stay silent either. Somewhere in our own lives there is a truth waiting to be spoken, a kindness waiting to be offered, a step waiting to be taken. And that is how Bread Crumbs are made. Poet. Witness. Voice for generations. We see you, Maya Angelou — for giving language to survival and wings to truth. Bread Crumbs — from those still marching forward. Steps From Our Sisters. Still here. What step might be waiting for you?
My son-in-love, Kamau, posted that he was booking a flight to Africa. There was a storm coming, he said, and somebody needed to build shelters for the giraffes.
He displayed a picture like it was urgent. Dark sky. Lightning splitting it wide open. Giraffes standing tall in the open plain.
He might have been joking (hard to tell with him.) Because that is Kamau. Compassion wrapped in comedy. Protection tucked inside a punchline. A heart that sees danger and immediately asks, Who needs covering? I love that about him. ( Don’t tell him I said that.)
But when I looked closer at the picture, those giraffes were not panicking. They were not lowering themselves to the ground. They were not scattering. They were standing.
Unshakable. Unmovable. Storm pressing in. Mortal danger possible. And yet their necks were lifted. Their legs planted. Their bodies steady in the wind.
It made me think of Psalm 91: “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Under His feathers you will find refuge.”
Those giraffes looked uncovered. But they were not unprotected. They looked exposed. But they were not outside of shadow. Psalm 91 does not promise the absence of storms. It promises covering in the middle of them.
And then Psalm 46:10 settles it: “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Not be frantic. Not be consumed. Not be undone. Be still. Still like you trust the One who commands the sky. Still like you believe the storm does not get the final word. Still like your roots run deeper than what threatens you.
We are living in days where thunder travels across oceans. International conflict crackles like lightning. Voices rise. Fear spreads.
But maybe faith looks like a giraffe in a storm. Not dramatic. Not reckless. Just anchored. Unshakable. Unmovable.
And I smiled again. Because my son-in-love thought he was just telling a joke. Instead… he helped me write a sermon about faith standing firm in adversity.
He is going to be so embarrassed when he reads this. Make sure you tease him for me.
Black history does not live only in textbooks, timelines, or framed portraits. It lives in you.
It lives in the prayers your grandmother whispered that no one recorded. It lives in the courage it took for your parents and grandparents to keep going when quitting would have been easier.
It lives in the way you show up to work, to church, to community, to family — even when the reward is unclear.
Black history is not only something that happened. It is something that is still happening.
It is made every time you choose dignity over bitterness. Every time you carry joy in a system that profits from your exhaustion. Every time you tell the truth — even quietly. Every time you endure, love, build, teach, heal, or believe anyway.
Some names were written down. Many were not. Some stories were celebrated. Many were survived. But history is not only what is remembered — it is what continues.
You stand on the shoulders of those who were victorious without reward. Those who served faithfully without applause. Those who planted seeds they would never live to see bloom.
Their courage flows through you.
And we have always known how to leave something behind.
Breadcrumbs on the ground when the path was uncertain. Hushpuppies tossed not as waste, but as wisdom — a way to distract danger long enough to keep moving. Cornrows braided tight to the scalp, not only as beauty or tradition, but as memory — paths etched into hair, holding maps to water, to safety, to freedom.
What could not be written down was carried. What could not be spoken aloud was encoded. What could not be protected by law was protected by love, community, and God.
This was not myth. This was method. A people learning how to survive systems designed to erase them — by remembering anyway.
If you are still leaving breadcrumbs for those coming behind you… still marking the way quietly… still choosing faith, dignity, and care when no one is watching… You are doing what has always been done.
You are part of a holy lineage of guidance and endurance. A living echo of the God who makes a way where none seems visible and leads His people forward, step by step.
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” — Galatians 6:9 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” — Psalm 119:105
If you are still standing, still hoping, still loving, still reaching for God and for one another — you are Black history in motion. Not just because of where you came from, but because of how you choose to live.
We see you. We honor you. You matter. Love, Chelle
In 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award. She won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). She was also the first African American ever nominated for an Oscar. History shifted that night.
And yet, at the ceremony held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, she was required to sit at a small segregated table against the wall, apart from her white castmates. Victory. With boundaries.
When the film premiered in Atlanta in 1939, Georgia’s Jim Crow laws barred Black cast members from attending. It is widely reported that her co-star Clark Gable objected strongly and threatened not to appear in protest. Accounts say Hattie encouraged him to attend, understanding the political climate and the fragile footing of her position in Hollywood. Public outrage from powerful allies could make headlines. But she would still have to live and work inside the system afterward. Strategy is not surrender.
MORE THAN MAMMY Hattie McDaniel was born in Kansas to parents who had been enslaved.
She was among the first Black women to sing on American radio in the 1920s, a successful blues performer before Hollywood and recorded 16 blues sides between 1926 and 1929. She appeared in over 300 films, though many roles went uncredited. Her best known other major films are Alice Adams, In This Our Life, Since You Went Away, and Song of the South.
She became one of the highest-paid Black entertainers of her era and later starred in the radio show Beulah, becoming one of the first Black women to headline a nationally broadcast radio program.
In 1952, she became one of the first Black women to star in a television series when Beulah moved to television.
She holds two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — one for motion pictures and one for radio.
All of this was before Rosa Parks. Before Martin Luther King Jr. became a national figure. Before the Civil Rights Act.
Jim Crow was law. Black actors were largely confined to domestic or servile roles. Many within the Black community criticized those portrayals for reinforcing stereotypes.
Hattie’s response was pragmatic and pointed: “I’d rather play a maid than be one.”
Being first does not mean being free. McDaniel died of breast cancer on October 26, 1952, at age 59 in Woodland Hills, California. Her final wish to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery was denied due to its segregation policy at the time. Decades later, a memorial plaque was placed in her honor.
In 2006, she was honored with a US postage stamp, and in 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.
In 2006, the Academy replaced her long-missing Oscar, confiscated by IRS debt, with a replica, formally acknowledging her historic win. The original was to have been displayed at Howard University but went missing in the 1970s
Notably, no other Black woman would win an Oscar for 50 years after Hattie. Not until Whoopie Goldberg won for Best Supporting Actress in Ghost.
Galatians 6:9
“Let us not grow weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
CARRY THIS WITH YOU Sometimes the door that opens to you is imperfect. Sometimes the room is segregated. Sometimes you are allowed in — but only to the edge.
Hattie McDaniel walked in anyway. Not because the system was fair. But because excellence inside limitation still moves history forward.
BREADCRUMB What opportunity are you resisting because the conditions are not ideal? Being the first often means carrying contradictions so others can inherit clarity.
SALUTE We see you, Hattie McDaniel — for becoming the first when the room was not ready, and for claiming victory in a nation that tried to seat you in the shadows.
Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us. Victorious without reward. Still here.
Before history narrowed the movement to one name, there were two brothers.
Alfred Daniel Williams King. Born in 1930. Preacher. Organizer. Strategist. Three years younger than Martin Luther King Jr. but standing in the same danger.
When Birmingham, Alabama became ground zero in 1963, A.D. did not visit. He moved there. Birmingham was nicknamed “Bombingham” because of the frequency of racial terror bombings. Churches. Homes. Black neighborhoods.
A.D. helped lead mass meetings and demonstrations alongside Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy. While Martin carried the national microphone, A.D. carried the local weight: Organizing. Stabilizing. Coordinating. Keeping frightened communities steady.
He was arrested during the Birmingham Campaign.His home was bombed. While Martin wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” A.D. was outside holding the infrastructure together.
Movements do not survive on speeches alone. They survive on people whose names do not trend. After Martin was assassinated in 1968, A.D. stepped further into leadership. One year later, in 1969, A.D. King was found drowned in his swimming pool at just 38 years old. The death was ruled accidental. But many in the community questioned how a strong adult man, familiar with his own pool, could drown under unclear circumstances.
No national day of mourning. No holiday. No monument echoing his name. History has a habit of compressing movements into a single face. But there were always second lines. Siblings. Strategists. The ones who held meetings when the cameras left.
We still do it today. We elevate one leader. We forget the organizers. We chant one name. We overlook the network. A.D. King represents that hidden layer.
He stood in the same fire. Faced the same threats. Carried the same calling. But the spotlight did not linger.
Micah 6:8
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
CARRY THIS WITH YOU If your work is not visible, is it still valuable? Of course it is. If your name is not printed, is your impact erased? Of course not.
BREADCRUMB History may narrow the headline. But heaven keeps fuller records.
We see you, A.D. King — for carrying weight without applause.
Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us. Victorious without reward. Still here.
Before the acclaim. Before the syllabus. Before the rediscovery.
There was a girl in Eatonville, Florida. One of the first all-Black incorporated towns in America. A place where Black men held office. Black businesses lined the streets. Black authority was ordinary. Zora did not grow up learning inferiority. She grew up witnessing Black self-governance.She later said she only felt “colored” when she left Eatonville. That foundation mattered.
Her mother told her to “jump at the sun.” Then her mother died when Zora was thirteen. Stability fractured. She was sent away. She worked as a maid. She fought for schooling. She even shaved years off her age to qualify for education she refused to surrender. She made her way to Howard University. Then to Barnard College — the only Black woman in her class.
Zora did not enter literature quietly. During the Great Depression, she worked under the Works Progress Administration, a federal New Deal program created to provide jobs for unemployed Americans. Through its Federal Writers’ Project, writers were paid to document American life.
Zora used that platform to travel the South collecting Black folklore. She sat on porches recording stories, sermons, songs, dialect. She preserved language as it was spoken — not polished for respectability. That was civil rights work.
She treated everyday Black life as worthy of scholarship at a time when much of the country treated it as caricature. But Zora did not always align with the popular script.
She did not write protest novels on demand. She did not center white oppression in every paragraph. She resisted narratives that reduced Black identity to suffering alone. And when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 — declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional — Zora publicly criticized aspects of the ruling.
Not because she supported segregation. But because she rejected the quiet assumption that proximity to whiteness was the only path to equality. She believed integration should not come at the cost of Black institutional pride or self-determination. She worried that dependence on white approval could weaken Black autonomy.
That stance placed her at odds with much of the civil rights leadership of her time. Some admired her independence. Some felt she undermined the movement. Some labeled her out of step. She kept writing anyway.
Their Eyes Were Watching God centered a Black woman’s voice, love, desire, and interior life. Not as political slogan — but as full humanity. Joy, for Zora, was not a distraction from struggle. Joy was defiance.
And then — she died in 1960, poor and largely forgotten. Buried in an unmarked grave in Florida. No parade. No national mourning. No bestseller comeback.
Years later, her work was rediscovered. Her grave was marked. Her voice returned to classrooms and conversations. Forgotten in her time. Found again by the next.
Zora reminds us that civil rights is not only marches and lawsuits. It is also narrative. It is who defines Black life. It is the refusal to shrink complexity for acceptance. She was brilliant and sometimes difficult. Independent and sometimes misunderstood. Unapologetic when it cost her.
CARRY THIS WITH YOU Where have you been told that success requires you to leave something of yourself behind? Zora teaches us that preserving who you are — even when misunderstood — is its own form of resistance.
BREADCRUMB Not all revolution is loud. Some of it sounds like porch laughter, a stubborn pen, and a woman refusing to be edited by her era.
We see you, Zora Neale Hurston — for telling our stories without apology. Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us. Victorious without reward. Still here.
Horace & Rose Gillison — A Civil Rights Love Story
For Black History Month, I want to honor two people whose legacy shaped not only my family, but the city of Richmond itself: Rev. Horace Gillison and Rose Gillison, my great-uncle and great-aunt. Their civil rights work did not always make headlines—but it changed systems.
Before they ever met, they came from very different worlds. Horace was a Virginia country boy with barely a sixth-grade formal education, big ideas, and—by most accounts—a big mouth. Others saw his limited schooling and dismissed him. Horace saw no limits at all. He believed doors were meant to be opened, systems challenged, and no one was qualified to tell him what could not be done.
Rose was polished and poised, barely grown, hailing from North Carolina before family loss dictated a move to Virginia to live with cousins. Where others saw Horace as rough around the edges, Rose became—for him—a beautiful princess of a challenge. And Horace loved a challenge.
Rose maintained a bail fund solely for Horace’s protests and sit-ins, understanding that resistance required preparation as much as courage. Horace challenged Richmond institutions like Thalhimers and Miller & Rhoads, demanding they hire college-educated Black women on their sales floors. He later took great joy in seeing that pressure bear fruit when I secured my first professional job in their credit offices—proof that justice delayed is not justice denied.
He rattled newspapers by insisting they run his ads—with his beautiful Black skin in all its glory—or face legal action. He was also arrested for earning a pilot’s license in Virginia and flying a plane to Culpeper so his mother could experience his joy of flight.
He was arrested again for attempting to sell a house to a Black family in the then all white neighborhood I now live in. He was rumored to have taken black families to house showings in rented limousines.
When Firestone Tire—a place where Black customers could barely purchase goods, let alone work—hired him as their first Black salesman, Horace did not simply succeed. He excelled.
Together, Horace and Rose ran soup kitchens, Christian charities, wig shops, and a modeling school that taught Black women poise, job readiness, and confidence—quietly fueling economic growth in local Black families. Rose’s porcelain beauty and charm made her the perfect choice to become one of the first Black spokespersons for Carnation Milk during the war. Horace ministered churches and broke corporate barriers as the first Black member of the Richfood board.
Their love story was just as intentional as their activism.
They met at a birthday party—for Horace’s then girlfriend. Upon seeing Rose, Horace declared, “That’s the woman I will marry.”
Rose did not make it easy. Before accepting his proposal, she handed him a list: get a good job, secure transportation, build a house. Each time Horace returned with a checkmark, she added another requirement—a lesson she later passed down to the women in our family: know your worth and make him work for it.
When Horace finally had enough, he arrived with friends, a new dress, and a pair of nylons—nearly impossible to find at the time—and dragged her to the courthouse.
They would reach their fiftieth wedding anniversary before Rose declared they finally had what she considered a proper wedding. Loving attended by 4 generations of the Gillison family
Though they never had biological children, Horace and Rose adopted two, fostered many more, and opened their lives wide enough to shape generations. Their influence rippled through the Gillison family and beyond—teaching love without limitation, legacy without bloodlines, and the quiet truth that family is often chosen, cultivated, and sustained by intention.
Lives, I believed patterned straight from the Bible; “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression.” — Isaiah 1:17 “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” — Amos 5:24 “Two are better than one… because they have a good reward for their labor.” — Ecclesiastes 4:9
Horace learned to do good and refused to wait for permission. Rose ensured that righteousness had structure and love behind it. Together, they made justice move.
BREADCRUMB Justice does not roll on its own. Someone has to push. Someone has to prepare. Someone has to stand side by side when the system pushes back.
Legacy does not always look like applause. Sometimes it looks like a bail fund. Sometimes it looks like insisting your image run in full color. Sometimes it looks like flying anyway.
SALUTE We see you, Rev. Horace Gillison and Rose Gillison — for seeking justice, correcting oppression, and laboring together so the stream would keep moving and building an extended family that walks in your shoes while still standing on your shoulders.
Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us. Victorious without reward. Still here.
This is a condensed excerpt from the forthcoming work,
defygravitywithoutwings.com 