02/28/2026
✨ Black History Month: Honoring the Roots That Raised Me ✨
As we close out Black History Month, my heart turns to the people whose lives shaped mine long before I ever took my first breath—
my grandparents, Vinson Crocker and Vernell Watkins Crocker—along with my mother, who stood on their shoulders and raised me with their same strength.
They were born in Virginia in the early 1900s, a time when the world for Black families looked very different from the one we know today. Their childhoods unfolded under the weight of Jim Crow laws, segregation, and systems designed to limit their movement, their opportunities, and even their identities.
Yet somehow… they still rose.
🌾 The Virginia They Were Born Into
When my grandparents entered this world, Virginia was a place where:
• Black people were denied the right to vote through poll taxes and literacy tests.
• Schools, transportation, and public spaces were segregated by law.
• The push for the Racial Integrity Act—an attempt to police racial identity—was already gaining momentum.
• Many Black families survived through sharecropping and tenant farming, working land they did not own under conditions meant to keep them in poverty.
This was the soil they were planted in.
🖤 The Community That Carried Them
Even in the midst of those barriers, Black Virginians built powerful, self-sustaining communities:
• Churches that served as spiritual, social, and political centers
• Black-owned businesses that kept money circulating within the community
• Teachers who nurtured brilliance with limited resources
• Families who leaned on one another, creating safety where the world offered none
My grandparents were shaped by that resilience, that dignity, and that unbreakable sense of community.
🌱 The Legacy They Passed Down
Vinson and Vernell Crocker raised me with the values forged in that era—
faith, discipline, pride, and a deep understanding of who we are as a people.
My mother carried those same values forward, pouring them into me with love, intention, and strength.
Because of them, I walk with my head high.
Because of them, I know my worth.
Because of them, I understand that Black history is not just a month—
it is a lineage, a responsibility, and a gift.
🏡 Black History Lives in Our Homes
We don’t have to look outside our families to celebrate Black History Month.
Sometimes the greatest stories of courage, resilience, and triumph are sitting right at our own kitchen tables.
My grandparents were Black history. My mother is Black history. And the legacy they placed in my hands continues through me.
✨ **Today, I honor them.
I honor where they came from.
And I honor the legacy they entrusted to me.**
Happy Black History Month.
May we continue to rise, remember, and reclaim our stories—every single day.
