I am a descendant of slaveholders. My five times great grandfather was a man named Josiah Anderson, who was listed owning two slaves in the 1810 Hardin County, Kentucky census. It is said that the Andersons came from West Virginia, from where they were ironically fighting for their own freedom during the Revolutionary War. In a story that begs to be written, Josiah’s grandson, Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson, became a staunch abolitionist and one of only 21 souls to join John Brown’s infamous failed attempt at instigating a slave revolt at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in 1859. Historians say that this event helped hasten the Civil War. What has captured my fascination in reviewing my family history and its involvement in the institutionalization of racism and believing that one human can legally own, torture, or kill another, is that within this system, one of my distant relatives not only questioned it, but gave up his life defending what he knew to be right. That dramatic transformation of belief occurred within the course of a single generation gap.  The day after Independence Day in 1859, Jeremiah wrote, “Millions of fellow beings require it of us; their cries for help go out to the universe daily and hourly. Whose duty is it to help them? Is it yours? Is it mine? It is every mans, but how few are there to help. Just as there are few who dare to answer this call and dare to answer it in a manner that will make this land of liberty and equality shake to the center.” Although I firmly believe that their unwavering commitment to racial equality was just and on the side of right, their methodology was not. 

Reflecting also on the last several months of events in the United States, I have often wondered what Jeremiah would have felt, said, or even done.  What has history’s lessons taught us, and what could I learn from my great-grand uncle's voice out of an unmarked and unknown grave? Although history has taught us that progress moves more in a spiral than in an upward slope, I was naïve to think that having elected our first black President, that we were continuing to move in an upward trend in terms of equality and the elimination of prejudices in its many forms. Now I see how much Jeremiah’s words still ring true to this day- 157 years later. 

Today in 2016, the current President-elect has unarguably moved our nation more in the direction of division and hate rather than unity and love. Cabinet appointments have recently been made that give evidence that hateful campaign words were more than just rhetoric. Although I do not believe that every person who voted in support of the current President elect holds racist or discriminatory thoughts and beliefs, I have been absolutely dismayed by the general apathy I have witnessed regarding events, and I question now which is more damaging. If history is any guide, apathy appears to be more dangerous than extremism. What gives me great hope; however, is that we have become such an amazingly diverse country.  I believe that it is our diversity that makes us stronger-and it is unprecedented in the history of the world.  So America is again reaching a crossroad.  And another Anderson asks, “Whose duty is it?” “Is it yours?” Is it mine?” The answer is clear to me:  it has always been, and continues to be, every one of us. Right or left.  I would hope that each and every one of us at some point in our lives have thought: what would I have done if I had a time machine and could go back and make a difference? Today, the better question seems to be, what will I do now?