In my house in Providence, there’s an old photograph of my parents hanging on the living room wall that I look at every day. They had been married for 11 years when it was taken. In the picture, they're sitting next to each other in the backyard on a late summer’s afternoon. They are smiling and holding hands. To all the world, they look like they have arrived—like they have everything they’ve ever wanted. But it’s 1957, and in America, Black people still have to worry about the possibility of