Everyone was in church. We all sat with our family, listening intently on what God has planned for us.
Why couldn’t God make us equal? My skin may be black, but I am the same.
Segregation made me feel like a shadow, like nothing. That’s how they wanted me to feel. Sitting at the front of the bus, drinking from different fountains, and being called “Nigger” was worst of all. The humiliation is unbearable.

My thought was interrupted as the smell of smoke alarmed my senses.
“Momma? Do you smell that?”
The room was filling with smoke.
We raced to the door but it was impossible to escape. The windows were shut from the outside, we were trapped.
I saw death in smoke slithering from under the door. Heavy and terrifying.
“Burn you savages!” Groups of men scream and hoot over our screams.
I looked at my mother, tears running from my eyes. Swallowing painfully, I slowly glanced up at her. I ran a soot covered, hand across her face as my mother would do to me. Sadly I choked out, “Hold me…”

I was ten when I died.