My mother was born into an America I never imagined experiencing in my lifetime—not at levels she and family members have detailed since my childhood. There was open-air hate, fear, division, and violence. There was my mother’s paternal grandfather, owner of 400 acres in South Carolina’s Low Country, murdered under sketchy circumstances, 397 acres of his property stolen from his widow, with no justice whatsoever. My mother shared how railroad tracks in her community had white people on one side