Voices for Virginia’s Children is proud to be a grantee of the Alliance for Early Success. The Alliance for Early Success is a national nonprofit that works with early childhood policy advocates at the state level to ensure that every child, birth through eight, has an equal opportunity to learn, grow, and succeed.   

The Alliance for Early Success replaced its annual grantee meeting with an all-new offering focused on supporting state advocacy organizations in their efforts to become allies for antiracism. The Alabama Experience brought teams from state grantee organizations—200 people in all—on a shared journey to Montgomery, Alabama, that incorporated the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Sites and many of the city’s other powerful spaces that explore our nation’s history of racial injustice and movement toward civil rights.  
 
Voices sent our Senior Leadership Team composed of Rachael Deane, Allison Gilbreath and Megan Mbagwu to share in this incredible learning opportunity. This series will include each of our personal reflections. Allison Gilbreath’s reflections and learnings can be found here. Below are the reflections of our Director of Operations, Megan Mbagwu.   
  
The Alabama experience was an opportunity to immerse myself in the truth of our country’s history and iniquities. It is one that, as a white woman, I have had the privilege to turn away from. I grew up in a well-resourced, predominantly white community just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. I attended public schools and was raised in a conservative church environment. I grew up with the belief that hard work created opportunities for everyone. I saw it firsthand with my parents who worked tirelessly to provide for me and my siblings. I had no reason– and no real opportunity– to think otherwise.

At the time, I didn’t recognize that while their hard work mattered, so did the color of their skin. And, so did the color of my skin. 

My school was made up of predominately white young people with very similar backgrounds and upbringings like my own. We learned our country’s history, written mostly by white men, never realizing there was more to the story—or to the reality—of what Black men and women in our country faced.  

We were taught the stories of slavery and civil war as stories of the past, there was no discussion of the longstanding consequences we see today.   

Our teachers made us feel that it was a situation that had been overcome, and that we had moved on from it as a nation. These “truths” became my worldview that I still fight against to this day.  

Sharon McMahon says  “No one deserves your unexamined loyalty.”

This has reverberated in my mind and spirit. I believe in the same way that no one deserves your unexamined loyalty, nothing deserves your unexamined loyalty. I spent most of my life giving unexamined loyalty to a set of beliefs. At 18, I moved to South Africa and was first exposed to the reality of poverty and the power imbalances that exist based on race. It was then that I started to examine and change my worldview. I hate that it took leaving my home in the U.S. and living in another country to open my eyes to the realities that were already in front of me in America. 
 
As a white woman with economic resources bestowed upon me at birth, I now understand how I have contributed to many of problems marginalized communities in our nation have faced. I have bought into the lies. History is not history; it is not just the past.  

We continue to live in the aftermath of a country built on racism.   

We decided that one person was deserving of freedom based on their skin color, while another was not. We labeled one man as “dangerous” and in need of controlling, while another was not. And in countless ways, we still wield that power over Black men and women today. Our prisons bear witness to that reality. 
 
Spending three days in Montgomery brought me face to face with the truths and realities that I wish my eyes would have been open to earlier in my life, and they are ones I am determined to ensure my own children know, whether or not the schools teach them. There are multiple moments and reflections from the trip that left unforgettable impressions in my mind and heart. 
 
I will never forget the very first tour which took place at the Freedom Riders Museum. The guide explained that the architect, W.S. Arrasmith, who was well-known for designing bus stations in the North, had to intentionally modify his designs to accommodate the segregation laws required in Montgomery. It was intentional. He had to intentionally change plans and designs that already existed. He had to intentionally curate the segregation to ensure a better and separate experience for white folks.  

He intentionally designed smaller spaces with less access to food, restrooms, heat, and air-conditioning for Black travelers. The tour guide informed us that in many cases, the stations did not staff the Black side of the terminal and often times Black travelers were left outside to fight the elements on their own. And yet, we believe that segregation and the racism that fuels it, were wiped away when abolition laws were passed.  

Systems that were built with intentionality must also be broken down intentionally. 
 

I also visited Southern Poverty Law Center while in Montgomery. It was the third and final tour after a long and heavy day. The tour started in their Martyr room where we watched clips on a few of the countless brave men and women who gave their all- their lives- to the civil rights movement. We then moved to a theatre to watch a film that connects the original civil rights movement to the present day.  

As I sat and watched the faces of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others fill the screen, my chest began to tighten. I looked into their faces, and I saw their fear and desperation. Their cries for their humanity to be seen, not the color of their skin. I watched and saw my son, my daughter, and my husband.  

My husband is Black. His skin carries a story much like George Floyd — a story he did not create, yet he cannot escape.  

It is a narrative imposed upon him, crafted not by his own hand, but to re-enslave the supposedly “free” Black man in a different form. It is a narrative that is not based in truth- a narrative that must be dismantled by those who built it.  
 
In the same way that the bus station was intentionally designed to negatively impact the lives of people of color, the systems that exist in our country are as well. In the same way that the perception of the Black man has been carefully and consistently narrated to be one of danger, the narrative on Black men needs to be rewritten.  It will take the same thoughtful intention and planning to dismantle harmful systems and change the narrative.  

The largest hurdle standing in the way is that me and people who look like me, benefit from these carefully curated systems. We must challenge the system that benefits us and oppresses others.  

We cannot be complicit. We must speak the truth. We must demand justice. We have to create new systems that benefit Black and Brown people and their families. Systems that do not separate children from their families.  Systems that do not allow for the murder of a man at the hands of those who were meant to protect him. We must recognize and challenge the ways in which we perpetuate new forms of oppression.  

We have been blinded from seeing that we traded slaveowner’s homes for a foster care system, cotton fields for prisons, lynching for legalized police brutality, and it must stop.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this life-changing experience from the Voices’ CEO, Rachael Deane.

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