- Evelyn Fortson
- Sep 13
- 3 min read

Being Black in America has never been easy, and unfortunately, I don’t see it getting easier for us as a people any time soon. I was a child during the Civil Rights Movement, so I, like many African Americans who missed that pivotal moment in Black history, wonder if I would have been a brave participant or just an observer. I hope I would have fought, but to be honest, I don’t know if I could have left the North to go to the South. Passive resistance in the face of such brutality is difficult to watch, let alone to embrace as a strategy and practice. Think about the willpower and the discipline that it took to endure the abuse that was heaped upon them.
The Black Lives Matter movement, founded in 2013, was in response to George Zimmerman's not guilty verdict in the murder of Trayvon Martin. Racial and economic justice, police and criminal justice system reform, and upholding the rights of marginalized people were some of the goals the organization wished to address. The Movement reached its peak in 2020 with global protests over the death of George Floyd. 15 to 26 million people protested throughout the United States, making it one of the country’s largest protest movements in history. And yet I sat that one out. I was in my fifties and fear kept me on the couch, rooting for the brave young people marching in the streets. The Black Lives Matter movement had me hopeful that maybe White America would finally look in the mirror and see the ugly truth of who they are as a nation. Maybe they would see that a country built on the cornerstone of a white supremacist ideology can not stand forever. Perhaps they would stop teaching their children to hate, and instead, they would begin to believe in the founding document of this country. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It is shocking and appalling to see how Christianity has been distorted to justify wickedness from this country's inception to now. Guns, Religion, bigotry, and White Supremacy have been conflated into a White Nationalist political ideology that has transformed the Republican Party. This thing that the Republican Party has become would have you believe that it is rooted in family values and Christianity, when in reality, there is nothing Christ-like about it. I will not speak about their family values because not every family shares the same values (enough said).
It is almost nine months into Trump's second term. I’m exhausted by the daily bombardment of ICE raids, threats to militarize American cities, the Big Beautiful Bill, the bombing of a Venezuelan ship, the building of an Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, a new patio in the Rose Garden, and a ballroom at the White House. All of which is to distract the American people from the fleecing of the country and the Epstein files.
“Move along, nothing to see here.” This is what the White House would have us believe. If that statement were true about the Epstein files, it would be easy to prove by simply releasing them. So, I ask you to use your common sense and draw your own conclusions. If you are comfortable or okay with having someone who has either slept with little girls or knew little girls were being sexually abused and sex trafficked remain in the White House, then keep the status quo. If the possibility of having a pedophile or someone who protects pedophiles stay in the Oval Office is abhorrent to you, then you must act. Every Republican in office who refuses to vote to release the Epstein files must be voted out.
If you are like me and have wondered if you would have acted during a pivotal time in history, you no longer have to wonder. Now is the time; the fight will be as close as your polling place or your mail-in ballot. Now is the time!