Tickets reserved from home months ago meant the next day in DC was, coincidentally, spent at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Here, my daughter and I were two white people in a sea of black, a demographic reversal from the day before.

I was acutely aware of being white while looking at images of human beings in chains, babies stolen from crying mothers who were sold on the auction block.

I waited in a long line of black people to see Emmett Till’s coffin. In 1955, Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago who was visiting Mississippi.

A married 21-year-old white woman accused him of whistling at her. Three days later, the black teenager was hauled away from his bed by white men. He was lynched, beaten, mutilated and shot in the head. They strung barbed wire and a 75-pound metal fan around his neck then dumped his lifeless body in the Tallahatchie River.

Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till, insisted on an open casket. She wanted the country to view her son’s bloated, mangled body. “When people saw what happened to my son,” she said, “men stood up who had never stood up before.”

The all-white jury took two hours to acquit the two white men of Emmett’s murder. The jury would’ve acquitted him sooner, but they’d stopped for a soda break. Sixty-two years later, the woman who accused Emmett said she’d lied.

Standing in front of Emmett’s coffin, I felt such rage, such anger at what happened to him that I could not contain it. Like a broken vase, water started seeping out of my eyes. My entire body started shaking, cracking. I can’t explain it other than, I’d left that room for a moment and went somewhere else.

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Our ancestors hand down to us physical and emotional traits, talents and personality. Do they also hand down their pain? Generations of pain from oppressing or being oppressed?

When I returned to my body again, I felt warmth all around me. Hands of all ages were on my back, on my shoulders, holding me upright. I looked down. The hands were all black. To be held up and witnessed like that — it was one of the most profound moments of my life.

When I was a 20-year-old white girl holding my black boyfriend’s hand as we walked down the street, Kelvin did not tell the white man who spit on me to fuck right the hell off. I did, causing Kelvin to grab my arm and drag me away. Later, Kelvin and I had our worst fight as a young couple.

I was angry he didn’t stand up for me. He was angry I didn’t understand why he couldn‘t.

I didn’t get it when Kelvin pulled me away. I still wanted to make it about me.

I didn’t get it when my friend told me I couldn’t call her sis. I didn’t realize that I was asking to adopt another race’s culture, experience and identity. I made it about me.

The white MAGA teens inside the Air and Space Museum didn’t get why a black boy needed to say, “I matter.” They made it about them.

Carolyn Bryant didn’t get it when she accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of flirting with her after he walked into Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market to buy two cents worth of bubble gum. She made it about her.

J.W. Milam didn’t get it when he murdered Emmett Till. “What else could I do? He thought he was as good as any white man.” He made it about him.