Over time, I've become increasingly convinced that to influence the future we not only have to gain control of the present but repair the past. To tell our own stories, our own histories – the mundane as well as the extraordinary because one thing sometimes lacking from historical narratives about people of color is the comfort of normalcy. If we don't tell them, who will?

To start, I've been working to put names and lives to the people in the old photos we have - the ones my mom remembers at any rate. Not all are family, some are just people whose lives intersected, but I'm going to tell their stories too. It's an interesting project for me… turns out that, in the process of filling in the blanks – with the help of other family members and Google - I'm learning about parts of history that I'd forgotten, or never knew and finding some of it fascinating. You never know what might pop up.

I'd love to build a vast collection of stories of others, or links to them, so I'm planning to start an "Our History" soapbox and forum space at intrapolitics.org, where we can gather the memories, help each other out with the history (especially us folks who never paid attention) and have another space where our stories are told. If you already have a collection, put the links in comments.

Though, as I mentioned, I've been thinking of this for a while, funnily enough it's a relative whose existence I was unaware of until 3 days ago who gave me the final push. In 1909 my great-great-great uncle, J.W. (John Wesley) Grant wrote a book called Out of the Darkness: or Diabolism and Destiny, which is a fictionalized account of his life. I've not read the book yet, but when I read the introduction (below the fold) my first thought was, "Dang, except for the language, this could have been written yesterday… "