Editor’s Note: Previously published on The Truth Is … by Lisa Sharon Harper (Substack) on June 11, 2026.
I want to tell you a story.
My Grandmom, Willa Jenkins Lawrence, was born in 1909 in Camden, South Carolina. She came into the world 30 minutes from the state capitol, where the state flag, featuring a white Palmetto with a crescent moon, once had served as a symbol of secession.
When Willa was only 8 years old, her mother, Lizzie, left her and her brother with family members as she fled the mounting violence in South Carolina. They had to stay behind, because they were too dark to pass.
Willa earned her keep, working in the fields. She eventually worked as a domestic servant to rich white families in the area. We believe she was sexually assaulted there.
Flash forward to the 1940s and 50’s. Willa is a married homemaker with two small children in bitterly segregated Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In the 1950s—before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965–Willa got off her butt and knocked on doors, making sure her South Philadelphia neighbors were registered to vote!
Willa knew something! She said, “We cannot do anything unless we can vote.”
My family members—people I knew—lived in pre-Voting Rights Act America! They suffered the violence and indignities that pushed millions to run north and break up Black families a second time!
They suffered the dehumanization of Jim Crow laws that declared to these people, made in the image of God, that they were not called and created to exercise agency in this land. No, they were created to be exploited for rich white men’s gain.
They survived the targeted racialized violence of fascism. They survived and overcame, having never really experienced freedom before!
And yet, they marched. And yet, they could taste freedom. And yet, they could see freedom.
Now the Voting Rights Act is dead—and we are living in a world with a legal structure much like the one that my vulnerable grandmother went door to door to end! The Voting Rights Act is dead—but we are not! We are here!
My grandmother’s blood courses through my veins. She calls me to gird up and stare down fascism in its snarling face. Our ancestors call us all to walk forward—together—in faith!
We cannot freeze! We must act!
We cannot freeze! We must gather the community!
We must knock on doors!
We must hold community meetings!
We must listen to each other’s stories and dreams for our families and our nation!
We have an opportunity here, and we must get ready for it!
It has all crashed to the ground now. And, as LaTosha Brown says, “We are the architects now!”
Now, in this 250th year of our nation, the founders’ flawed blueprint for slavocracy, Jerry-rigged into a multi-racial democracy, the whole thing is tumbling down.
NOW is our time to dream, design, and build the next America!
Let it be so, oh, Lord!
Amen.
