Editor's note: This month, The Sun dives into some of Gainesville's underrepresented Black community leaders and their work. Anne Wolf is the third in this series.
Anne Wolf grew up 45 minutes south of Gainesville in Ocala. She is biracial — her father is Black and her mother white — but lived surrounded by whiteness both at home with her mom, stepfather and stepsister in a white suburban neighborhood and a predominantly white school.
At 8 years old, she stopped playing outside after experiencing personal incidents of racial violence. At school, she noticed students of color would get in trouble more often than white kids. The education system did not feel like a place of hope or opportunities for Black students; it was just somewhere to be housed for the day. She wondered why.