How to Fight: Resistance, Ownership, and Equity. aka Not Today, Sir. Not Today.

“We first been told that we wasn't fitting in. We got to get the kind of education to fit in this society. But as sick as it is, I wonder, do I want the kind of education that's gonna really rob me of having real love and compassion for my fellow man? We got to start. We got to start in every institution in this country.” - Fannie Lou Hamer

I have been at war most of my life. Most of the wars lived within. A middle child in birth order and peacemaker by circumstance, I learned to be a bridge, creating space for the voices of others by silencing myself. This war is never-ending. But the first was a 25-year war that started quietly in August 1983 on Fox Hill Road. 

Integrated classroom at the Hampton Institute Laboratory Schools in 1957

I started school four years earlier at a magical place called the Hampton Institute Non-Graded Laboratory School, located on the campus of Hampton Institute, now known as Hampton University. Affectionately referred to as the Lab School by those who attended, I fondly remember my three teachers who taught me to read and write. I recall how excited I was when I could read the church bulletin and understand it. The school, set on a college campus, was lively and vibrant, with three-year-olds and college students everywhere. My older sister spoke about a legendary student hangout called The Grill and how delicious the M&Ms were when she could get them. The Old Pool was just as scary as the girls' locker room. During Massive Resistance, as a private school, the Lab School leveraged and exercised autonomy by not only remaining open when other area public schools closed to avoid integration, they also intentionally stayed open and taught racially integrated classrooms.

The Rotunda served as the center for student gatherings, featuring sunken seating and a glass dome that allowed natural light to flood in, connecting classrooms that opened from the center. 

Student Voice in the Rotunda in the 1970s (Courtesy of The Hampton Institute Non-Graded Laboratory School)

The bronze statue of Booker T. Washington —the school’s founder — was ever-present, even out of sight. The fragrance of Mary Peake permeated the air, even with the door closed.   We sang Lift Every Voice and Sing to start each day. As a non-graded school, there was an emphasis on skill mastery, team teaching, and individual student growth. The academy that prepared me to love myself and my fellow man grounded its students in literacy and liberation from oppression, not just for black children, but for all children.

Root systems are complex. Structural roots can be as thick as a human's thighs, and the finer roots as thin as the hairs on our heads and skin. For a tree to grow, the conditions must be optimal. There must be sufficient oxygen. If there is too little water, the seed will not sprout. Too much water and the root would rot. But for a tree to grow this long, it had to be protected. Mary Peake began teaching enslaved Black Americans to read and write under what is now called Emancipation Oak in 1861. If the tree was planted 309 years ago, it survived the Battle of Hampton in 1775 during the Revolutionary War. It survived the raid of British troops in 1813 during the War of 1812. It was more than 115 years old when the anti-literacy laws were passed with chilling precision. With the surgical accuracy of a drone strike, after Nat Turner's rebellion, Virginia legislators enacted the 1831 Anti-Literacy Law, making it illegal to teach free African Americans to read or write, and imposing fines on those who violated this law. While they may have temporarily assuaged the fears of the planter class, these policies were far from benign;  they were intentional designs aimed at severing Black people’s access to language, learning, and liberation. Beneficial to the American slave economy, it was understood that a literate person could not be controlled. Since American capitalism required American slavery, Black literacy threatened American business interests. Literate slaves do not exist. Fearlessly, Peake, a free Black woman, taught anyway, protected by the safeguards of Emancipation’s growing branches.

The original impulse to become literate was a dormant seed that lived in many Black communities throughout the American South before, during, and after the Civil War. The enslaved labor class's emergence to access fair wages and the ballot was met with incredible resistance. Still, the freedmen and freedwomen knew they needed the education to prepare them for their new roles as free American citizens. They required the education to help them fit into America with political power and economic agency, not controlled by the planter elites. The response?  They built schools. Schools in churches. Schools under trees. Schools in the hallways. The freedmen and women could not let the slavers educate them. Education is a practice of freedom—a didactic love letter between teacher and student. Why would they trust the same monsters guilty of the most gruesome brutality to love them enough to teach them, support their development, and ultimately, their elevation and emergence? 

The long journey to a liberatory education designed to prepare Black Americans for full citizenship was hard fought. Education for full citizenship for Black people—one that would transform both the social, political, and economic order—was at war with the American economy and the social order of white supremacy. Ironically, however, it was aligned with the espoused ideals of the country. But without the social relationships or collective will or imagination to enable emergence, the tension between the social-political condition of black people and America’s economic position clarified the paradox of color—what to do with 4.4 million black people forced to labor without compensation, who no longer had to work for free? The country had to hold the economic and social conditions of Black folks and the ideals of the founding documents. In DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (formerly titled Black Reconstruction of Democracy in America), he notes that “by their own reproduction, the Negroes reached 3,638,808 in 1850, and before the Civil War, stood at 4,441,830. They were 10% of the whole population in the nation in 1700, 22% in 1750, 18.9% in 1800, and 11.6% in 1900. And if these people were not working, “the plantations could not produce.” 

Black labor made a young America a power player in the global economy, and the freedom of black people created a peculiar dilemma. When faced with the dilemma of the United States losing its cotton position in the global economy at the end of slavery, the industrialists prioritized the interests of the economy, the elite, and the landowners at the expense of its newest citizens. Carnegie declares, 

“We cannot produce cotton enough for the wants of the world. We should be in the position in which South Africa is today but for the faithful, placable, peaceful, industrious, lovable colored man; for industrious and peaceful he is compared with any other body of colored men on the earth—not up to the standard of the colder North in continuous effort, but far in advance of any corresponding class anywhere. South Africa has just had to admit contracted Chinese labor, although there are between five and six million of colored people there who will not work. We should be in the same [situation] but for our colored people, who constitute one of the most valuable assets of the Republic, viewed from an economic standpoint. It is certain we must grow more cotton to meet the needs of the world, or endanger our practical monopoly of that indispensable article. Either the efforts of Europe will be successful in growing in other parts, even at greater cost for a time, or they will learn to substitute something else for it. We cannot afford to lose the Negro. We have urgent need of all and of more; let us, therefore, turn our efforts to making the best of him.”​

The industrialists thus invested in paternalistic and oppressive academic models and school founders that did not immediately threaten the economic interests and social stability of the country, launching the long protracted struggle for liberatory education. From the Butler School in 1863, where students learned arithmetic and housekeeping, to Hampton Normal and Agricultural School in 1868, where students learned trades, to Hampton Institute in 1930, when the school became a college, the roots of liberatory education run deep. 

As a student at the Lab School, I was unaware of how the school was conceived and born in war. In the tensions and paradox of northern manufacturing and the southern production, the tensions and paradox between political and social ideals of America, how white supremacy threatens those ideals, and its irrational grip on the country’s throat, and the tensions and paradox of the purpose of education and for whom, in the tensions and paradox of two narratives about America one black and one white—a third space created by the newest black citizens emerged without the financial support of the State, legal permission from the legislature, or social will of the elite. These black students and teachers learning to read and write were owners in a new America before constitutional ratification. Owners act as if. They do not need or wait for permission. They are rooted in natural law with deeper roots than the skin.

My time at Hampton Institute Non-Graded Lab School ended at the end of first grade. When I entered the public school system in Hampton, Virginia, in 1983, I was one of the few black children in the school and quickly became aware of racial differences. We enrolled in a school with white children to give us the skills that would fit our new role in society.  I was not aware of the battlefronts of schools, the new segregationists with old strategies, and why my parents drove me and my sisters across town to the fundamental school. In the 1980s, fundamental schools were schools whose enrollment also had a rider—a covenant of explicit expectations around conduct, the academic model, and parental involvement. These schools of choice were still under federal supervision to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court's decree in Brown v. Board of Education. 

My parents, experts in this type of warfare, knew there were risks. We would encounter teachers and administrators who may not like us or even see our humanity. We would encounter adults who were trying to hurt us. They knew our innocence. They saw my innocence. And would often remark on the ease with which we moved in these new spaces. How would we navigate this system whole and intact with surprise hate attacks around the corner, ambushes in classrooms, and teachers weaponizing opportunities? They also knew that the chance would be costly. Education from white supremacists also teaches white supremacy—the ideology that requires a black identity to shrink and become limp for its survival. But the most significant risk was blending so fully into white supremacist culture that the so-called “killer opportunities” stopped being metaphorical—and became a literal, lived reality.

As I grew older, I started to see the battle more clearly—but the strategy and the soldiers weren’t always obvious. They looked like teachers, neighbors, coaches—adults whose racism leaked out in sideways comments, subtle slights, and the venom tucked in the corners of their smiles. I didn’t have the words to name what I was feeling, no tools to defend myself, and little guidance on how to push back. What I did have were my parents, who told me: your academic performance is your response. That was the armor I was taught to wear.

I learned to be exceptional and achieve at the highest level to navigate the school system with alacrity and flexibility, to give them few reasons to correct me or my behavior. Bulletproof perfection was a strategy. Drafted into an immoral war of ignorance, the classroom was the battleground. Landmines of low expectations and seductive exceptionality were inked into graded papers. Glimmers of excellence were also met with shady accusations of academic dishonesty, insinuating that I and other Black children could not produce high-quality work independently. The fragrance of the highest recognitions—elite college admissions, full scholarships, and academic awards—was also incensed with public declarations of inferiority in public. O'er the ramparts they watch'd. Out of adult mouths, it sounded like “you only got into that school because you are a black girl.” Bombs bursting in air. Her words cut the air with disgust. Eleven words reflected the bloodlines of the battle—we are in the same space, but we are not together. Rockets red glare. You are teaching me, but you do not like me. My freedom is not your objective. And in the apex of my academic career, the caring adult was neither happy, able to celebrate, nor share in my success.  It was not a shared success in the schoolhouse. It was only celebrated publicly in the homeplace. The schoolhouse was not always the home of the brave. 

There were spies along the way, primarily black teachers and principals, and one white teacher who tried to help us move through the school building—a black science teacher who slipped opportunities into my locker. Or the black guidance counselor who attended college with my parents checked my schedule to ensure I was enrolled in the most rigorous classes to prepare for college. I was not assigned to these teachers' caseloads; I was part of their cultural caseload. They were veterans and recognized the body snatchers. They saw the edges of the battlefield and the weapons.  My school had a troubling tendency to overlook the need to adjust the rigorous educational paths of black children, even when data and state assessments pointed to a necessity for change. Always ready to lower the rigor, they seldom remembered to raise it. Rooted, these spies made sure I was protected. When academic achievement is a form of manumission, what about the children who could not get their papers? How do you prove you are not someone else’s Negro? 

My sadness hardened into arrogance. I didn’t know it was okay to cry—that my tears that never fell would grieve the educators who had once raised, taught, and shielded me. Just by being there, my presence turned that classroom into a kind of no-man’s land. We longed for the branches of protection, but our small bodies and bold ideas were not always held. Our wins weren’t always celebrated. The racists didn’t win—but they didn’t lose either.

Flowstate: Speak the Future and Design the Future

As a child of Americans who came of age during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, I grew up learning about the equity movement, the battles, and how the war showed up in the local context. This taproot was the way black folk rooted deep in past earths and found their own light in the present, clinging and climbing. Parents, aunties, and uncles spoke of their experiences drinking from the other water fountain or walking to the other beach. Sometimes, they were met with a police encounter. Mostly, they just received the validation that water is never racist and oppressive. Water knows no boundary; it just flows. Like the tree whose root seeks the groundwater, this resistance was core to their pedagogy and instructional practice—This is your country too, so act like it. Don’t be foolish. Be strategic.

Learning to be an owner in America was a pillar in their curriculum. Sitting at lunch counters and at the front of the bus was not the mark of one hero, but the ongoing practice of many, many youth around the segregated South. In Stanley Nelson’s pivotal work “Tell Them We Are Rising—The Story of HBCUs in America", one student recalled that if a student was not protesting, there was no judgment condemning the individual. It was the school’s integrity and orientation that was questioned. What is your school teaching you if it's not teaching you to combat and tear down the system that is trying to kill you? What is your school teaching you if it's not teaching you to combat and tear down the system that is trying to kill your fellow citizens?  What is worth learning when you are in the crosshairs? What is worth knowing when your neighbors are in the crosshairs? This was the grown-up conversation after the children went to bed. But these battle plans and strategies emerged, along with eggnog, turkey, ham, and sweet potato pies on the holidays. It was the joyous, lively buzz that textured the preacher’s sermon on Sunday and the talk on the way to school on Monday. 

The schoolhouse bell silenced the electric buzz into a torturous white noise. When the strikes of oppression hit black bodies, the shocks pulsed through the black community. They consumed dinner table conversations, sermons at church, and weekend gatherings. When there was a mention at school, it was hushed and muted, always distorted. In that noise, what was loud and clear was the silent curriculum that always seemed to reverberate the loudest. These were not the conversations of this schoolhouse. 

When physics was introduced in the curriculum at Hampton Institute, it was grounded in classical mechanics and Newton's Law. It is not just the understanding of time; these laws explain motion, the ability of simple machines to do complex work, and how we fight. 

If American battle strategy is grounded in Newtonian logic—where the world is viewed as a machine and people as parts to be fixed, controlled, or discarded—then the “enemy” becomes anyone who disrupts that mechanical order. In this framework, the enemy isn’t random; it’s deliberately designed. It's the person who resists, who refuses to comply, who challenges the dominant story. And when we look at American history with honest eyes, we see who has most often been cast in that role: Black people, Indigenous people, immigrants, the poor, queer folks, the loud, the different—those who dare to be seen. Our laws, schools, borders, and military strategies are all designed to manage these so-called threats, reinforcing the illusion of safety and order. But peace without justice is still violence. In a Newtonian system, dissent becomes danger, and difference becomes deviance—so we respond not with understanding, but with containment. 

But real life doesn’t follow Newton’s rules. And neither do people.

While defense ideologies reinforce the illusion of separateness—building boundaries, policies, and entire strategies to turn that illusion into lived experience—the scientific world tells a different story. At the atomic level, we know that nothing exists in isolation.  The space between—the flow, the interaction—is what creates reality. The observer and the observed are not separate; they are inextricably linked, influencing one another in a constant dance. As Margaret Wheatley writes in Leadership and the New Science, even matter responds to the observer's expectations. This truth dismantles the very logic that undergirds Newtonian thinking. It reminds us that control is a myth, and that design—whether of strategy, systems, or society—must begin with relationship, not force. She notes,

“If quantum matter develops a relationship with the observer and changes to meet his or her expectation, then how can there be scientific objectivity? If the scientist structures an experiment to study wave properties, matter behaves as a wave. If the experimenter wants to study particles, matter obliges and shows up in particle form. The act of observation causes the potentiality of the wave packet to “collapse” into one or the other aspect. One potential becomes realized while the others instantly disappear. Before the observer acts, an endless profusion of possibilities continues to be available. But once the observer chooses what to perceive, “the effect of perception is immediate and dramatic. All of the wave function representing the observed system collapses, except the one part, which actualizes into reality.”

The same science that helps us understand how trees grow from seed to shade, also offers this vantage point to help us see the influence, the power of perception, and the relationship between the observer and the observed—quantum roots with atomic seeds. 

So if even at the atomic level, the boundary between observer and observed dissolves—as quantum physics has revealed—then the relationship itself becomes the site of power, meaning, and transformation. Yet we continue to cling to the comfort of separation. We wall off, reduce, simplify, and double down on Newton because linear thinking feels familiar, even when it’s fundamentally out of sync with how the universe actually works. But quantum mechanics reminds us that our perception doesn’t just influence reality—it creates it. The moment we observe, the system collapses into the version we expect. That collapse has consequences. When we design systems, policies, or relationships based on fear, control, or dominance, we are collapsing all other possibilities—eliminating justice, joy, and liberation from the field. And even with this knowledge, knowing that our bodies, atoms, and very essence are wired for relationship, we still choose the illusion of separation. We hold onto outdated ideologies like a child clings to a thumb—comforting, but incapable of meeting the moment. If we are to evolve—truly evolve—we must let go. Let go of the illusion of control. Let go of mechanistic thinking. Let go of the stories that say we are not bound to one another. Because the truth is: we are, and we always have been.

Instead, this is the time to say, Not Today, Sir, Not Today. 

There is no slave-owner relationship in a perfect union. A perfect union declares that we are all owners together. The future we want tomorrow flows through how we show up today, and it requires a fundamentally different relationship and structure, with the adults and children who have the relationships to let the complexity of human experience flow into the classroom and pool in the center. For the school and the adults to see children mainly black, trans, queer, female as co-owners and the next co-creators the American experience—is a change of perception that once occurs has both immediate and dramatic consequences. Leaders who create the conditions for this change in relationships and consequently perception are the next generation unsilent peacemakers.  

In the transition period, we must routinely ask ourselves not if we are holding on to old science because it's more comfortable and comprehensible, but how we are holding on? Are we showing up as fully integrated people able to speak as owners of the American experience? Are we free enough to be perceived by the moment, fold into a flow state, and behave accordingly? 

Equity is ownership. It is about creating spaces where everyone can own and steward resources, knowledge, decision-making, and the future. We used to trust schools and learning centers to teach the content that would expose their injustice and let children develop their gifts. And we can still trust some. We used to trust teachers and leaders to teach the content for young children, especially black, brown, poor, queer, and trans children. And some are still doing the work. We used to trust our government to work relentlessly toward a more perfect union that included all of us with verifiable pathways to ownership. A new exemplar is needed. It is time to build schools again. But this time, they will allow non-Newtonian leadership to flow, ushering in a future of collaboration and collective ownership. A new science sees new relationships. 

It's elementary. If you are not an owner and are excluded from your share in the prosperity of our country, you are somebody’s property. If we are not preparing children to be owners in America’s prosperity, we are preparing them to be an owner’s property. We all deserve to share in the prosperity of our country. We are all owners. 

The quantum poet’s rhetorical algorithms and calculations prove that the claim is clear: 

“For what this really means is that all of the American categories of male and female, straight or not, black or white, were shattered, thank heaven, very early in my life. Not without anguish, certainly; but once you have discerned the meaning of a label, it may seem to define you for others, but it does not have the power to define you to yourself.” - James Baldwin

 Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America,  New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935. Please note that the original title was Black Reconstruction of Democracy in America, but the title commonly referenced is Black Reconstruction in America.

Wheatley, Margaret J.. Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World (p. 37). (Function). Kindle Edition.