05/25/2026
This Memorial Day, we remember the freedom fighters history tried to forget. Before there was a United States worth saluting, there were men who gave their lives so that Black people could live free.
🙏🏿Toussaint Louverture — the self-liberated general who led enslaved Africans in Haiti to defeat the most powerful empires on earth, and died in a cold French prison cell in 1803 for the crime of demanding freedom.
🕯️ Nat Turner — who in August 1831 rose up in Southampton County, Virginia, and was hanged on November 11th of that year for daring to believe that God did not make him a slave.
🕯️ John Brown — the white abolitionist who raided Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859, and went to the gallows on December 2nd saying, “I am worth now infinitely more to die than to live.”
They wore no U.S. uniform. No flag was folded for their families. No bugler played taps. But they died in a war for freedom — the longest war this country has ever fought.
This Memorial Day, pour one out for the ones who bled for liberation before it was legal to want it.
Their names. Our breath. Forever.
