Chapter 25: The Race

America so often wants to paint a picture of a country that is a melting pot of harmony. From Woody Guthrie (1944) singing “This land is your land this land is my land, from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me”; to the Statue of Liberty’s heartfelt inscription, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I, however, learned in the harshest of ways, that this land is not made for you and me, nor am I a part of the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, that this country readily and willingly wanted to accept. No, I was the citizen covered under Americas 13th Amendment, Section 1 “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This is the American citizen I had engraved in my mind at 5 years old growing up in Nashville, TN. The country music capital, the city where today everyone so readily flocks to, the city that currently sees growth of 100 new residents per day.