(light music) - When we are being real about telling communities histories and focusing on the margins of who are race and all types, like not just thinking about race but thinking about like the queer histories, the queer elders who stories haven't been told yet.

All of those folks, everybody who's at the margin, women and non-binary folks whose histories, whose people are pushed to the margins.

When we're real about telling those stories, I think that history becomes more personal.

And that's one thing that I really appreciate about this project.

Even down to the idea of, like some of the the histories that we're talking about, people are related to those folks, you know.

We're not just talking about the person down the street that you have no relationship to or like the person who's on other side of the country.

Like, this is a very personal history.

It's the person that you saw in your church.

It's the person that your mom knows.

When I listened to the stories of Jim Bolden and Michael Brown and Miss Clara, they remind me of people that I care about.

You know, I care about them also, but they remind me of other people that I grew up with.

Like I just saw Miss Clara today.

Miss Clara reminds me of so many aunts and so many, and reminds me of my mom.

You know, I told her you reminds me of my mom or mac and cheese, you know, like just the willingness to feed people, for that to be like a type of ministry.

You know, Jim Bolden reminds me of some of my uncles.

Michael Brown reminds me of mentors and folks that I looked up to.

You know, we all have these types of people in our lives these people who fulfill these roles.

And because we allow the history to get personal, it's easier to see the relationship between all the other people in our lives who also haven't gotten their flowers, who have also been doing the things that we in our community needed them to do.

Even we didn't know that we needed them to do it.

Like a core piece of this project is connecting young people to elders and also like giving elders their flowers now and not saying we're going to wait and not saying we're going to wait, even for someone else to give you an award.

Like, no, we recognize the power of what you went through and what you did.

So while we have the power, we're going to honor you.