Tag: God

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Pig Foot Mary: The Woman Who Pushed Her Future Down the Street

Posted in Black History Month, faith, food, God, inspiration, money, relationships, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment


Before food trucks.  Before catering contracts.
Before pop-up kitchens. There was a formerly enslaved Black woman  pushing a baby carriage filled with pickled pig’s feet.

Her name was Lillian Harris Dean. History remembers her as Pig Foot Mary. And what some would have called scraps, she called strategy.

Born in Mississippi around 1870. She migrated north during the Great Migration era. She was reported a woman of large stature (striking fear in even some men).

THE BABY CARRIAGE BEGINNING

After emancipation, economic opportunity for Black women was painfully narrow. Formal loans were not available. Property ownership was rare. Protection under the law was inconsistent at best.

So Mary did what resilient women have always done. She looked at what she had.
She cooked pig’s feet — inexpensive cuts that working people could afford — and loaded them into a baby carriage. That’s  right no baby, just a baby carriage purchased with two of the five dollars she arrived with and a tin pot she brought with her.

Then she walked the streets of Washington, D.C., selling directly to laborers, porters, and government workers who had migrated from the South but desperate for a taste of home cooking lacking in the industrial north.

No storefront. No investors. No safety net.
Just legs, grit, and a carriage. That carriage gave her mobility. Mobility gave her customers. Customers gave her capital.
Capital gave her options. Consistency built reputation. Reputation built revenue.

From those early street sales, though unable to read, she negotiated contracts with suppliers, opened restaurants, operated boarding houses, acquired property, and became one of the wealthiest Black women in New York City  during her time. She later married a prominent black lawyer she had hired to keep her financial empire safe.

Later in life, she faced legal troubles that interrupted her business, a common vulnerability for Black entrepreneurs in that era. When her power and influence started to invade beyond the black community and into  white upper Manhattan,  a racist court system convicted her of running a disorderly house.    After her release from prison, she retired to California.

She did not inherit influence. She built it.
She did not wait for approval. She moved.

Pig Foot Mary represents a pattern we see over and over in Black history:
Innovation born from restriction.
Mobility created from limitation.
Enterprise rising from overlooked ingredients.

She took something humble and made it sustaining.

“She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.” — Proverbs 31:16

Mary did not own fields at first. She owned a route. But the principle is the same.
Use what you have. Work what you have.
Move what you have.

CARRY THIS WITH YOU
You may be waiting for a storefront when all you have is a carriage. Push anyway.

You may be waiting for funding when all you have is a recipe. Cook anyway.

You may be waiting for someone to validate the vision. Walk anyway.

BREADCRUMB

Sometimes the business plan is wrapped in something people underestimate. And sometimes the thing you’re pushing… is actually pushing you into destiny.

We see you, Lillian Harris Dean for turning a baby carriage into a business model. We see you for feeding working hands and building wealth from what others discarded.

Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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Henry Box Brown – He Mailed Himself To Freedom

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In 1849, an enslaved man in Virginia made one of the most daring escapes in American history. His name was Henry Box Brown.

Born around 1815 in Louisa County, Virginia, Brown was enslaved by John Barret, a former mayor of Richmond. After Barret’s death, Brown was sent to Richmond and hired out to work in a tobacco warehouse. He married while enslaved. He had children.

In 1848, his wife and children were sold to a plantation in North Carolina. That loss changed everything.

On March 23, 1849, Brown arranged an extraordinary plan with the help of free Black and white abolitionists. He had himself sealed inside a wooden crate measuring approximately three feet long, two feet wide, and two and a half feet deep. The box was labeled “Dry Goods.”

It was shipped from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, via Adams Express Company. The journey lasted 27 hours. The crate traveled by wagon, railroad, steamboat, and carriage. At times it was placed upside down. Brown later wrote that blood rushed to his head and he feared suffocation. To steady himself, he sang hymns.

When the box was opened in Philadelphia at the Anti-Slavery Office, Brown stepped out alive and reportedly greeted the astonished men in the room with calm composure.
His escape was immediate national news.

After gaining freedom, Brown became an abolitionist lecturer. He traveled throughout the Northern states, speaking about slavery and reenacting his escape by climbing into a replica box during performances.

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which increased the risk of capture even in free states, Brown moved to England. He remained there for more than two decades, performing as a speaker, showman, and later as a magician, continuing to tell his story.

He eventually returned to the United States later in life and remained a public performer until his death, believed to have occurred in 1897.

Henry Box Brown did not wait for rescue.
He engineered it. He endured confinement to secure freedom. He turned survival into testimony. He transformed a shipping crate into a symbol of resistance.

His story remains one of the most vivid examples of self-emancipation in American history.

Psalm 18:19
“He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”


CARRY THIS WITH YOU
Freedom sometimes requires courage that feels impossible. Do not underestimate what can happen when resolve meets faith.


BREADCRUMB
When systems close in, imagination becomes strategy. When doors are locked, courage builds another exit. History remembers those who refused to accept chains as final.


SALUTE
We honor Henry Box Brown, whose 27-hour journey inside a wooden crate became a permanent witness to the will to be free.
We salute the man who trusted movement over fear, faith over despair, and action over surrender.

Your box became a doorway.
Your confinement became testimony.
Your name remains a symbol of self-determined freedom.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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Horace And Rose: A Civil Rights Love Story

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( Condensed Excerpt)

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,

Horace and Rose: A Civil Rights Love Story.

Love,
Chelle
defygravitywithoutwings.com

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Ida B. Wells — The Truth That Refused to Behave

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She  was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, enslaved at birth and freed as a child by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union Army.

She grew up in the turbulent Reconstruction era — a time full of hopes for freedom, but also brutal backlash against Black citizenship and rights.

Her early life was shaped by both the reality of oppression and a family that deeply valued education. Her father served on the board of trustees at Rust College, a historically Black college, and her parents instilled in her a belief in learning and equality.

At just 16, after both parents died during a yellow fever epidemic, Ida became the head of her household—raising her siblings while working as a schoolteacher.

At 25, Ida B. Wells was already a newspaper editor and co-owner — The Memphis Free Speech   and Headlight – when a white mob destroyed her newspaper’s office in Memphis for exposing the lies behind lynching.

The true catalyst for her lifelong crusade came in 1892, when three of her close friends — Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart — were lynched by a white mob.

Refusing to accept the “justified crime” narratives of her time, Wells launched meticulous investigations into lynching across the South.  She documented lynchings with data and truth, sparking a global anti-lynching crusade that laid the groundwork for modern investigative reporting.

She was forced to  carry  a pistol for protection while exposing racial terror.

They burned her press.
She sharpened her pen.

Wells became a leading anti-lynching crusader, traveling across the United States and Europe to expose lynching’s brutality, publish groundbreaking pamphlets like Southern Horrors and The Red Record, and call the nation to account for its violence.

Wells also stood at the intersection of civil rights and women’s rights. After moving to Chicago and marrying attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895 — yet keeping her own name — she continued her activism by organizing
She also stood and co-founded important organizations such as the Alpha Suffrage Club (the first Black women’s suffrage group in Chicago), the Negro Fellowship League, the National Association of Colored Women, and helping shape the early movement that became the NAACP.

Wells refused to be sidelined — famously refusing to march at the back of a segregated women’s suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., instead slipping into the front ranks under the Illinois banner.

She continued writing, organizing, and speaking for justice until her death in Chicago at age 68 — and in 2020 was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her fearless reporting that birthed many of the core practices of modern investigative journalism.


“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves… defend the rights of the poor and needy.” (Proverbs 31:8–9)


BEFORE YOU MOVE ON
What truth have you learned to soften so others can stay comfortable?


BREADCRUMB
Truth backed by courage and facts becomes dangerous to systems built on silence.


We see you, Ida B. Wells — for telling the truth when lies were law.
Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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Lucy Diggs Slowe — The Woman Who Wouldn’t Play Small

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Lucy Diggs Slowe was born in 1885, right here in Virginia. Sharp-minded. Observant. The kind of girl who noticed early on when the rules didn’t quite add up—and instead of shrugging, she kept the numbers in her head.
Lucy loved learning, but she loved fairness more.


She went to college at a time when that alone made a statement. Then she went and won a national tennis championship, not because she was trying to make history, but because she liked to compete and she was good at it. First Black woman to do that. No speeches. No victory lap. Just excellence.


Later, at Howard University, Lucy started seeing something that bothered her. Black women students were being monitored, managed, and micromanaged—while Black men were being prepared for leadership.

Lucy didn’t raise her voice about it. She raised the standard.


She became the Dean of Women and pushed back on rules that treated grown women like children. She fought for privacy, dignity, and the right for Black women to become themselves without apology or supervision disguised as concern.


And when she saw young Black women needing each other, she helped start Alpha Kappa Alpha—not for prestige, but so they’d have sisterhood, scholarship, and somewhere solid to stand. Lucy didn’t perform rebellion.
She practiced alignment.


SCRIPTURE CONTEXT
“Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” — Romans 12:2


BEFORE YOU MOVE ON
Where have you learned to make yourself smaller just to keep the peace? Lucy reminds us that refusing to conform isn’t arrogance—it’s obedience to who God made you to be.


Some people don’t change the room by entering it.
They change it by refusing to play along.


We see you, Lucy Diggs Slowe — for standing firm when shrinking was expected.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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John Berry Meachum — The Man Who Took the School to the Water

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John Berry Meachum was born enslaved in 1789 and eventually brought to Missouri, a slave state that worked very hard to keep Black people uneducated. Because ignorant people are easier to control.
Meachum didn’t accept that.


Through years of labor, he bought his freedom. And once free, he did what a lot of free folks might not have dared to do — he started teaching Black children to read. Not secretly. Not halfway. He opened a school.


Then Missouri passed a law that said Black people could no longer be educated.
Now here’s where John Berry Meachum shows us the difference between rebellion and holy wisdom.
He didn’t shout at lawmakers.
He didn’t beg for exceptions.
He read the law.
And he noticed something important: the law applied on land.


So Meachum bought a boat, anchored it in the Missouri River, and moved the school onto the water.
No land.
No violation.
No stopping the lessons.


Children,  enslaved and free,  climbed onto that boat and learned to read, write, and think for themselves. The school became known as the Floating Freedom School, and it floated right outside the reach of unjust power.


John Berry Meachum didn’t break the law.
He outgrew it.


He understood that sometimes obedience to God requires creativity — and that wisdom can be just as disruptive as protest.
“We must obey God rather than men.” — Acts 5:29

In 1846, he published his pamphlet “An Address to All the Colored Citizens of the United States” emphasizing education and self-respect.

His floating school survived after his death until around 1860. Continuing under the direction of one of his former students

Where have you been told “you can’t” — not because it’s wrong, but because it’s inconvenient for those in power?

John Berry Meachum reminds us that sometimes the door isn’t locked. It’s just in the wrong place.

Wisdom doesn’t always fight the system head-on.
Sometimes it floats right past it.


We see you, John Berry Meachum.  Teaching freedom when the law said no.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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LEWIS LATIMER: HE MADE THE LIGHT

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Black history is not only about who struck the match.
It is also about who made sure the light did not go out.
Lewis Howard Latimer understood that.
Born in 1848 to parents who had escaped enslavement, he taught himself to read, draw, and engineer in a world that did not expect brilliance from him—and was not structured to reward it.
History remembers the spark.
Latimer worked on the endurance.
In 1884, he joined the Edison Electric Light Company as a draftsman.
He was not hired to be the face of innovation.
He was brought in to make the work hold.
While others are credited with inventing the light bulb, Lewis Latimer improved it.
He developed a carbon filament that made electric light durable, affordable, and practical—light that could last in ordinary homes, not just demonstrations.
Without his work, the light would have remained fragile.
Exclusive.
Unreliable.
And the light was not his only contribution.
Latimer also:
– drafted critical technical drawings for early telephone technology
– designed an evaporative air-conditioning system
– improved safety and sanitation systems for railroad cars
– trained others, documented processes, and quietly strengthened industries that carried other people’s names
Important work.
Essential work.
Weight-bearing work.


Lewis Latimer lived long enough to see the world changed by the light he helped sustain.
He died in 1928—not wealthy, not widely celebrated—but respected by those who understood the work.
His legacy lived on in homes lit safely, cities made brighter, systems made usable.
If you have ever been the one who made something work instead of making it visible—
If you have refined what others rushed through—
If you have strengthened what others started—
If you have stayed faithful long after the applause moved on—
This story stands with you.
“Let your light so shine before others…” — Matthew 5:16


Lewis Latimer did not create the first light.
He made sure it endured.
Some people are called to begin things.
Others are called to make them last.
This, too, is history.
This, too, is weight-bearing work.


Lewis Latimer stands with you.
God sees the work that makes light reliable — not just remarkable.


We see you, Lewis.
We honor the way you made the light last.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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James Hemings: He Changed the Taste

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James Hemings shaped a nation’s palate while the nation refused to speak his name.


Born enslaved in the 18th century, James Hemings lived and worked at Monticello under Thomas Jefferson.

He was trained as a chef in France, mastering techniques most Americans had never seen or tasted. He learned sauces, pastries, ice creams, and refined methods that transformed how food was prepared and served.


When he returned to America, those techniques came with him.
They became American.
Macaroni and cheese.
Refined sauces.
Elegant plating.
Desserts meant to be lingered over.
These weren’t trends.
They were foundations.
And James Hemings was the hands behind them.


James Hemings cooked at the highest tables — yet he did not own himself.
He was expected to create beauty while living without freedom.
To refine taste while enduring injustice.
To elevate others while remaining invisible.


He was also the older brother of Sally Hemings.
Both siblings lived under the same roof at Monticello.
Both were bound to the same man.
Both carried different burdens of the same system.
James navigated his captivity through skill, restraint, and intellect.
And still — he negotiated his freedom.


He didn’t storm the kitchen.
He didn’t burn it down.
He bargained carefully, strategically, and bravely — securing his release in exchange for training his replacement, his brother, Peter


Freedom came late.
Recognition never really came at all.
He died young. Just two months after securing his freedom.
His influence lived on without attribution.
He was victorious without reward.


James Hemings reminds us that culture is often shaped by people whose names history forgets — but whose work it cannot erase.


“Give us this day our daily bread.” — Matthew 6:11
Bread is sustenance.
Bread is culture.
Bread is memory.


What we eat carries history — whether we name it or not.
James Hemings fed a nation that did not know his name.


If you have ever poured skill into work that bore someone else’s signature,
created beauty in a place that did not fully see you,
shaped something lasting without receiving credit,
or learned excellence under pressure and restraint,
James Hemings stands with you.


God sees the hands that prepare nourishment — not just for bodies, but for culture itself.


We see you, James.
We honor the way you changed the taste.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.


Love, Chelle

Historical Context & Image Note:
This reflection draws from documented Monticello and Hemings family records; no verified historical photograph of James Hemings exists, so a respectful illustration is used in place of a photographic image.

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Barbara Johns: She Was Fifteen and Would Not Wait

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Barbara Johns was fifteen years old when she decided that waiting politely for justice was no longer an option.


In 1951, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, Barbara was a student at Robert Russa Moton High School — a segregated Black school with no gym, no cafeteria, overcrowded classrooms, and tar-paper shacks used as makeshift buildings. Meanwhile, white students nearby learned in brick schools with resources and space.


Barbara saw it.
Barbara lived it.


And Barbara refused to accept it.


Without permission from adults, administrators, or movement leaders, she organized a student strike. She convinced her classmates to walk out, not knowing if anyone would listen — only knowing that staying silent was no longer an option.


Adults were furious.
Leaders were nervous.
Teachers were afraid they would lose their jobs.


Barbara’s name was almost removed from the complaint.
But the case moved forward anyway.
Her courage became part of Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, one of the five cases folded into Brown v. Board of Education.


History changed.
And Barbara Johns?
She received death threats.
She had to leave her hometown.
She lived the rest of her life quietly.
Her name was rarely spoken when Brown was celebrated.
She was victorious without reward.


Barbara Johns teaches us something uncomfortable and holy:
Sometimes the people who force history to move are the ones most quickly pushed out of the picture.
She was young.
She was female.
She was uncompromising.
And she was inconvenient.


“Let no one despise you for your youth.” — 1 Timothy 4:12


Barbara didn’t wait to be older.
She didn’t wait to be chosen.
She didn’t wait to be safe.
She acted — and the system scrambled to catch up.


If you have ever been told you were too young to understand, spoken truth that made adults uncomfortable, sparked change and then watched others take credit, or paid a personal cost for doing the right thing early — Barbara Johns stands with you.


She reminds us that courage does not require credentials — only conviction.
She lit the match.
The world tells the story without her name.
But God remembers.


We see you, Barbara.
We tell it right.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.


Love, Chelle

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Charles Hamilton Houston: He Built the Road

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Charles Hamilton Houston believed something radical for his time:

That the law — when disciplined, prepared, and forced to tell the truth — could be used to dismantle injustice.

He was not a march leader.
He was not a headline.
He was a builder.

Born in 1895, Houston became a lawyer and educator who saw segregation not just as wrong, but as structural. He believed it had to be taken apart piece by piece, case by case, classroom by classroom.

So he did the slow work.

As a professor at Howard University School of Law, Houston trained a generation of Black lawyers to be precise, relentless, and morally clear. Among them was a young man named Thurgood Marshall.

Houston taught his students that excellence was not optional — because lives depended on it.

“A lawyer is either a social engineer or a parasite on society.”

Houston chose to be a social engineer.

Long before Brown v. Board of Education reached the Supreme Court, Charles Hamilton Houston was already laying the groundwork.

He challenged unequal pay for Black teachers.
He dismantled segregation in graduate and professional schools.
He forced courts to confront the lie of “separate but equal.”

Case by case, brick by brick, he weakened the foundation of legalized segregation.

Others would stand in front of the nation when the walls finally fell.

Houston would not.

His health deteriorated under the strain of the work.
He died young.
And when history celebrated the victory, his name was often missing from the story.

He was victorious without reward.

Charles Hamilton Houston reminds us that some people are called to prepare the way, not walk through the door themselves.

“Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight paths for Him.” — Isaiah 40:3

Houston prepared paths others would walk — paths that led to justice, dignity, and opportunity for generations he would never meet.

If you have ever done work that made someone else visible,
labored behind the scenes while others stood at the microphone,
poured yourself into something you knew you might not live to see finished,
or believed faithfulness mattered more than credit,

Charles Hamilton Houston stands with you.

He built the road.
Others crossed it.

And God saw every stone he laid.

We see you, Charles.
We honor the work you did quietly.

Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

Love, Chelle