I watched her as she proudly carried her baby son into the sanctuary, oblivious to the stares of those who may have been critical of her attire, her hairstyle, or of the fact that the father of her child was nowhere to be seen. She was excited to be a part of the LDS Church, having been baptized in the middle of her pregnancy, and was eager to share her newly minted testimony with her baby son.

I watched her as she stood holding her baby son, with a look of expectancy, clearly waiting to have the circle form around her and her son. Instead, the circle was formed without her and her baby son was taken from her arms by  one of the men from the circle while another one of the men stepped away from the circle long enough to escort her to a seat.

Arrested for being inventive while brown-skinned.

When I was ten years old, I was one of the four African American students who were transferred to the predominantly white school. This move was my county’s half-hearted and passive-aggressive effort to comply with the U. S. Supreme Court’s orders to desegregate the nation’s public schools. I was the only African American child in my class of about thirty students. My teacher was white. Because our school was overcrowded, my class met in a separate building called the “Tater House” and I did not see or interact with the other three African American Students.

We were on a six-week grading period and during that first grading period, I would raise my hand to respond to questions that were asked in class or volunteer to solve a mathematical problem on the board or diagram a sentence. However, it was as if I was the…