Bob Woodson taught me America’s wounds heal only through truth and courage

One thing that is often overlooked, or simply not understood, is how hard a fate it was to be born into a segregated America and then come of age just as the country began to reckon with its racial horrors in the 1960s. For centuries, Blacks had been slaves and then segregated, always divorced from the full rights promised by American principles. They built a world within America, a parallel civilization of churches, schools, businesses and communities forged out of necessity and extraordinary will.