We’ve spent this series telling stories of Black resistance — stories that stretched from the late 1800s into the early 1900s. But before we move on, we need to pause.
Because these weren’t just stories of what was done to us. They were stories of how we survived.
And survival itself — in the face of injustice — is resistance.
Black Resistance as Survival
Every time we tell these stories, I see the comments. I hear the questions:
“Why don’t you tell more happy-ending stories?”
“Why not tell us about when Black people won?”
I understand that desire. Believe me, I do. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel good. But to tell only those stories would not be honest. Because yes — Black people thrived. We built businesses. We raised families. We laughed and danced and created beauty. We lived.
But we did so inside a world that was bent against us. A great Sunday still ended back on a sharecropping plantation. A thriving business still operated inside a system that denied us credit and resources. A brilliant child still went to a segregated school with hand-me-down books.
We found joy in the cracks of a broken system. And that joy mattered. But we cannot tell our story without telling the truth about the ground we stood on.
That is why this series — Black Resistance — was not just about protest. It was about survival. Because to endure inside injustice is itself resistance.
The Stories We Sat With
In this series we told four stories. I won’t retell them here. But I want to reflect on what they revealed.
Lula Sherman (1887) was only 14 years old when her life was stolen in South Carolina. The white man responsible was lynched by Black men — an act that shocked the nation. But what struck me most was not just the violence, but the response. White newspapers could not defend the man outright. Lula was dead. Yet instead of affirming her dignity, they attacked Black womanhood itself. They said we were not worthy of protection. That lynching was a tool for whites, not for us. Even in our grief, racism found its voice.
Onancock, Virginia (1907) gave us Samuel Burton, a Black businessman who was doing it all — owning, employing, encouraging his people. And for that success, he was punished. Driven out, his store burned, his name vilified. But Samuel resisted. He filed one of the earliest civil rights lawsuits in federal court. Reading about it, I was stunned by how cities then used the same legal tricks I see today — trying to escape accountability on technicalities, rather than face the harm they caused. More than a century later, the game hasn’t changed. Only the players have.
Edgar Caldwell (1918) was a decorated soldier, back from World War I. He had served, sacrificed, survived. But back in Alabama, Jim Crow said no. No to equality. No to his dignity. No to his manhood. On a streetcar one day, Edgar said yes. Yes, I am a man. Yes, I will defend myself. That yes cost him everything. He was condemned to die. Yet on the scaffold, with a rope around his neck, Edgar recited Psalm 23: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” That wasn’t weakness. That was resistance. To fear no evil in a world full of it? That is resistance.
The Arthur Family (1920) brought us to Paris, Texas, where a family of sharecroppers said no to endless exploitation. The planter demanded their labor, even on Saturdays. They refused. The price was brutality. Two sons burned alive. Daughters violated. Parents devastated. Yet they fled and survived — arriving in Chicago as refugees of racial terror. And when I saw their photo at the train station, pain written on their faces, I realized: this was the Great Migration. Not just seeking opportunity. But escaping terror.
Four stories. Four windows into a single truth: Black resistance has always come at a cost. But it has also always carried us forward.
Songs of Survival
As I sat with these stories, I kept asking myself: How did they survive this? How do you survive your daughter’s death? How do you survive losing your husband? How do you survive losing your store, your livelihood? How do you survive watching your sons burned alive?
And I kept going back to the church I grew up in. Back to the saints who have long since crossed over. Back to the songs they sang.
“Jesus is a rock in a weary land.”
“Precious Lord, take my hand.”
“Shine on me, let the light from the lighthouse shine on me.”
Those weren’t just hymns. They were survival manuals in melody.
When they sang “Jesus is a rock in a weary land,” they were saying Jim Crow’s land was weary. You needed a rock just for protection. When they sang “Precious Lord,” written in grief after Thomas Dorsey lost his wife and child, they were naming their own pain. Because the valley of injustice hadn’t ended.
These songs weren’t escapism. They were resistance. They gave our people language to keep walking through the valley. And they remind us still that survival has a sound.
Survival as Inheritance
Here is the truth I want to leave with you: survival is resistance.
We may not have “won” against Jim Crow in the traditional sense. But we endured. And that endurance is victory.
Someone survived the ship for you. Someone survived the plantation for you. Someone survived Jim Crow for you. Someone survived lynching and segregation and humiliation for you.
And now it is your turn.
Don’t get consumed by the noise of this moment. Don’t lose heart. Don’t lose hope.
Keep resisting. Keep surviving. Not just for yourself — but for the next generation of Black girls and boys who will enter this valley. They need to know what we knew: someone made it for me, and I can make it too.
That is our inheritance. That is our resistance. That is our survival.
This reflection is part of the Memory Justice Project, a research and storytelling initiative led by civil rights attorney Julian Johnson — dedicated to preserving memory, restoring dignity, and confronting the injustices history tried to erase. Because memory is a form of justice.
