The Ordinary Impact

I grew up in Illinois—the Land of Lincoln. I learned about the Emancipation Proclamation in school. We took field trips to Springfield. We walked past bronze statues and read plaques in the Capitol. We were taught that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. But no one told us the whole story. No one mentioned that it took more than two years after Lincoln’s proclamation of freedom to finally reach every corner of the country. No one told us about June 19, 1865 —when the last group of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were told they were free. No one said their freedom had already been signed into law, but it was withheld. Delayed. Denied. That day—Juneteenth—was missing from my textbooks. But it matters. Deeply. Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom, yes—but it’s also a call to honesty. A call to look again at the stories we were told and ask,  “What was left out?” "Who was left out?" It’s a day to amplify Black joy, history, culture, and resilience. And for those o...

Today, the United States of America celebrates 241 years as an independent country. Our founding fathers did not want to be ruled with an iron fist. They did not want to be dictated to and looked down upon. They desired independence. Freedom. Every year we celebrate that freedom, as we remember the struggle of our founding fathers who were revolutionaries and rebels. We celebrate and remember the loyalty and bravery of so many men and women who fought to defend freedom around the world. We honor the many soldiers who put the lives of others above their own. On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty - designed by Frederic August Bartholdi’s and built by Gustave Eiffel - was dedicated in New York Harbor. Seventeen years later, “ The New Colossus ” poem, written by Emma Lazarus was cast onto the bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal’s lower level as a reminder of the liberty offered in the United States of America. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yea...