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Revolutionary or rioter?
Your perception of which is which might be based on the skin color of the person in question.
Prejudice, racism, violence, social injustice; these are topics steeped in emotion and identity, and conversations about them can be challenging.
Sonny Kelly is happy to accept that challenge.
“Communication builds bridges,” he says. “It’s the beginning of every solution that we need.
“Change, just like any social relationship, is a process and not a product.”
Kelly is a dynamo of optimism and hope. He teaches communications classes at Fayetteville Tech and he writes and performs shows that confront racial injustice and, more importantly, a path forward.
One of the first jobs Rose Highland-Sharpe ever had was at Belk department store in the cosmetics section at University Mall in Chapel Hill.
Flori Roberts and Fashion Fair were some of the biggest name brand makeup lines in the late 1970s, and Highland-Sharpe had clients coming every week to get their faces made up and to tell her all about their personal problems.
“This is what I was told I was good at, listening to people’s concerns,” said Highland-Sharpe, a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill. “I could help solve other people’s problems.”
She saw a person’s face as a canvass and inherently knew what colors matched best with which skin tone or how to prep the skin before applying foundation. To her, making people feel good about themselves on the outside was just as important about how they felt on the inside.
When Jasmine Coleman reflects on her time in the Army, it’s mostly with a sense of pride, but she doesn’t negate the experiences of others.
“I sometimes think of how my life would have progressed if I had been born 20 or even 15 years earlier,” Coleman said. “There would have been some open doors, but many closed ones, too shut tight purely because my skin color is darker than someone else’s. You look at Civil Rights leaders and martyrs, I think of Sgt. (Medgar) Evers, a World War II veteran who wanted to help people vote and register to vote and was killed, still trying to serve his country.”