Growing up in the 1950s and â60s,
Keith Lester remembers attending schools in New Jersey, where Caucasian classmates always had definitive answers to where their families were from. Lester recalls these classmates, without much thought, could rattle off the names of such countries as England, France, Italy, Romania, Russia, and countless other international locales. Yet, it was a different story for Black classmates when asked about their familiesâ countries of origin.
âI noticed that the Black students in class, including me, didnât know what countries our families were from,â Lester recalls, noting that Africa is not a country. âThe best that we could do was say that our families came from Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi or North Carolina or some other southern state.â