Ten black mothers sat on the stage in an auditorium and looked into a mixed crowd of women in the audience. They were about to share something personal and hurtful with this room full of mostly strangers.

They were going to talk about something they didn’t normally share with their white friends or colleagues.

It was about to get real in that room.

In the aftermath of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager fatally shot by a white Ferguson police officer, conversations about race in the St. Louis area have been loaded.

Christi Griffin, the president of the Ethics Project, wanted this to be different. She wanted to invite other mothers to hear directly from black mothers the reality of raising a black son in America. She wanted them to hear the words they each had said to their own sons, in different variations over the years, but all with the same message: Stay alive. Come home alive.

She wanted mothers who had never felt the fear every single time their child walked outside or drove a car that he could possible be killed to hear what that felt like.

Her son, now grown, had never gotten in trouble nor given her any trouble growing up. But when her son was 14 years old, the family moved into an all-white neighborhood. She took him to the police department to introduce him to the staff. She wanted the officers to know that he belonged there, that he lived there.

When he turned 16, it was time for another talk. Every single time he got into his car to drive, she made him take his license out of his wallet and his insurance card out of the glove compartment.