Teresa McRae

    
These are pictures I picked up off of Pinterest to use as “inspiration” for the novel I am writing. It is set in the antebellum period in North Carolina and revolves around a woman who, while passing for white, helps to lead slaves to freedom. That is the simple synopsis. 

Last night a church in South Carolina experienced a horrendous, unimaginable event. A young white man entered an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charelston South Carolina and killed nine people after sitting through the prayer service.  It is being called by the authorities a hate crime, which I’m sure it was.

I don’t usually blog about current events, but this felt like someone punched me in the gut and then some. I spend and have spent the better part of a year researching, studying and writing about slavery.  Often I’m stopped cold while reading or writing, when I think we are only 150 or so years from the actual horror that slavery was. 

Then, as I’m about to go to sleep, I read a FB post that tells me, a traditionally black church was invaded and desecrated and nine people lost their lives. Needless to say, I did not sleep well. I am devastated, appalled, heartbroken; and yes, I know racially motivated crimes happen all the time. This crime, hit me hard. Sometimes that happens.

Why? I am one half of an interracial marriage.  I am the mother of a biracial child. I am a family member of an African American family through marriage.  I am worried about racially motivated crimes. 

The bigger picture. When, if ever, will this end.  There is racial unrest all over the world. I know this. I also know that it is pointless sometimes to go tilting at windmills. 

So, I sit here as broken-hearted this morning as I am at times, when a portion of the research I do for my story,  tears a hole in my soul. I read and write  about what no human being should ever have had to endure. Then, I see that we have learned nothing.  The nine people who lost their lives would possibly agree with me.  May they rest in peace. 

I hope I have been clear if not eloquent. This is a subject that is so emotional for me that I find myself at a loss to adequately put into words what I am feeling.

Read between the words, my friends.  See my broken heart.