As a young white girl growing up outside Detroit, I had a lot of questions. Why is the city a shell of the past? Why are there so many beautiful, abandoned buildings? Why did my grandparents celebrate their wedding reception at their downtown family home, then head for the suburbs a few years later? Why do we call Motown music ours? Why do we have so few Black neighbors?

My questions were tricky and mostly stayed locked in my heart and mind until I was freer to explore them. Curiosity and imagination make a historian, and that’s what I’ve become—a white scholar of Black history. It’s uncomfortable sometimes, but comfort isn’t my priority.

Moses and Martin Luther King Jr. saw the Promised Land from the Mountain Top, but they knew where they’d been and what they went through to get there. As we think on what’s lovely, what’s true, and the peaceful, equitable society we all desire, I want to encourage us to look back so we can find our way forward. As a history teacher, I know many find history tedious and boring. The change comes when students of history start to see their own story in the story of the past. If we really want to break apart systemic racism and build bridges, white people need to reach the place where they understand Black history (as well as other indigenous and cultural histories) as their history too. It takes commitment and stepping out of our comfort zone into “dangerous unselfishness,” as MLK called it.

The history and trauma passed down in the DNA of people of color are barely on the radar of most white people. If it is, they don’t know how to approach it and are intimidated by what truly is a massive undertaking—exploring the truth of American history and sitting with the gut-churning realities of systemic racism. Taking time to read stories from the past might be a start. (There are thousands of digital narratives available online under “Special Collections” or “Digital Archives” at university and public libraries that take only a minute to find. For example: “The Church in the Southern Black Community at The University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” or  The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.) I believe when we fully understand the atrocities of the past, we are more motivated and able to fight for what’s just. White supremacists are not interested, but we’re not all white supremacists. For a lot of us it’s just ignorance, apathy, and the comfort of privilege that dulls our senses and actions. Let’s do our part to understand what happened.

“White flight” after the Detroit uprising of 1967 is the answer to many of the questions I had growing up. White people feared what was happening in the city and instead of listening, validating, and making changes, they left the scene. Black people in Detroit (and many urban cities) were hurt and angry and had had enough—a spark lit a flame. Turns out, there was an uprising in Detroit in 1863 too—more than a hundred years earlier.[1] That’s a lot of years and generations waiting for change. Why was there an uprising in 1863?[2]  How was it connected to the uprisings of 1967? What will it take to prevent more uprisings? These are questions history can help answer.

To this point, I’ve mainly addressed the need for white people to study Black history. In humility, I offer that we all need to know more history. In sitting with the thoughts and experiences of past people, structural foundations that are still problematic today, and the social, economic, and cultural realities of previous times, we may find windows and ways into dismantling inequity, discrimination, disparity, and oppression.

I still have many questions about where to start and what to do, but I want to stand on the Mountain Top and look to a Promised Land full of justice and love for all people—a land where healing has taken place because validation, vindication, empathy, and trust have found a home. The more I understand the road my friends have traveled, the more hopeful I become that we will walk hand in hand in the journey ahead.

*Postscript to my Black friends: I apologize for places where I’ve stated the obvious as if it were new. What is obvious to some is obscure to others. I acknowledge this annoyance and pray you’ll join me in starting small so we can grow forward together.

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[1] “A Bloody Riot,” The Detroit Free Press” March 7, 1863, 1.

[2] Matthew Kundinger, “Racial Rhetoric: The Detroit Free Press and its Part in the Detroit Race Riot of 1863.” Michigan Journal of History, vol. III, issue 2, January 6, 2009, pp. 1-29.