In my life, I have been a colored, a Negro, a black, an African American, and a person of the global majority.

This is my reflection as a colored girl.

Decades of being defined.

I was born May 2nd, 1945.

The C on my birth certificate symbolized the life planned for me.

As a colored, I was born into a society that would not recognize my beauty, my intelligence, Or my humanity.

I grew up in the Jim Crow South.

For those first 16 years, Jim Crow laws and customs required me to experience segregation and discrimination in almost all aspects of life outside of my own community.

I was expected to keep my place in the racial hierarchy Whites over colored.

In 1962, I went up north to college, where I hoped to evolve from a colored to a capital “N” Negro But even at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, we were considered negroes with a lower case “n”.

We were still socially and culturally separate and considered intellectually inferior by our white teachers and students.

Then in 1966, civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael shouted “Black Power” and instantly my racial identity was changed.

James Brown sang, I'm black and I'm proud.

Our afros were the rage, and this former colored girl embraced a new definition of beauty.

The Black Power movement throughout the 60s and 70s promoted racial pride and self-respect, and it recognized the vitality of our culture and the importance of my own community.

22 years later, in 1988, civil rights activists and Baptist preacher Reverend Jesse Jackson began a movement to change our designation from black to African-American.

It was meant to show the direct connection to our country's history.

In fact, it was the first time in the United States that blacks were acknowledged as Americans.

That didn't mean that the narrative of intellectual inferiority had changed just because we were now African-Americans.

My children experienced that old negative stereotype as early as elementary school.

So I became a consultant to help teachers and schools change how they perceive and treat students of color in the classroom.

Today, I mark the other box, no longer bound by any social construct that accepts white superiority as the norm.

I now consider myself a person of a global majority Here in the United States, everything I learned as a colored, as a black, as an African American and as a person of the global majority, allows me to fearlessly embrace my cultural heritage.

A heritage that has sustained my people over 400 years.

Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.