April 16, 2025
Ben Jealous
Stories this photo appears in:
The History They Fear is the Truth We Carry
The last living link of my family’s story of origin in antebellum Southern Virginia died at age 105 a few years ago. My grandmother, Mamie Todd, was born in 1916. Her grandparents were born into slavery. She fought Jim Crow. She stood up for Black teachers and students in a segregated school system in which she taught in her early career. She supported my mom when, at 12, she signed on as a named plaintiff in one of the feeder cases to Brown v. Board of Education. And she stood by mom every step of the way when three years after that, my mom helped desegregate her high school.