Tag: sankofa

21-Wales Window at 16th Str Baptist Church

Reconciliation Ain’t No Joke

Posted on by Nilwona Nowlin

Today is April Fool’s Day, but there’s nothing funny about this post. I usually schedule my posts to publish at 8 a.m. (central time); so as you are reading this, I am probably passing through the Alabama Welcome Center off of I-65 that features a rocket. I and about 45 others are on a coach bus, in the early part of what is called the Sankofa Journey. The Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) describes Sankofa as “an intentional, cross-racial prayer journey that seeks to assist disciples of Christ on their move toward a righteous response to the social ills related to racism. Read More

Nowlin artwork photos

Don’t Trust Your Gut

Posted on by Nilwona Nowlin

Growing up as a black girl in the United States, I was “taught” a lot of things about people from Africa. The content of the lesson depended on the source. Overall, the understanding that I operated under was this: Africans did not like black people born and raised in the United States because we were not “pure” Africans. Not only did they dislike us, they looked down on us. Because of the way that Chicago is segregated (that’s a whole other blog post!), I never had the chance to prove or disprove this theory. I recently published a piece about Read More

Nowlin artwork photos

Freedom or Bust

Posted on by Nilwona Nowlin

It was a cold and rainy night in early February. I stood in the dark, on the property of Mr. Jacob Burkle, whose home was a depot on the Underground Railroad. I shivered from the cold but also from a fear that had suddenly come over me from out of nowhere. Was I as safe as I thought I was, or was my safety most definitely in jeopardy? I was beginning to rethink my decision, but something deep inside told me it was now or never… The character and event portrayed in the above excerpt is not fictitious. It is Read More

Nowlin artwork photos

My Obituary

Posted on by Nilwona Nowlin

My (paternal) grandmother died four days before Christmas. She’d been sick for about a month. Just as I had come to terms with the fact that she was most likely going to die, she seemed to take a turn for the better. About a week later, she was dead. So it was a bit of an emotional roller coaster. However, the good part about it all was that my grandmother was 95 years old. So she had lived a long and fruitful life. On top of that, she was prepared to die. Not just figuratively but very literally. As we Read More