A Baby Faced Hilerie

Look what a random cleaning binge will unearth. 😮 This pic is from 2008. A baby-faced Hilerie working at the Ohio House of Representatives in the Riffe Center for then-House Minority Leader, the one and only Joyce Beatty.

Finding this sent me down a rabbit hole. It’s funny, because there have been times I thought I’d strayed from my path. But this picture is proof that the love for community and the deep, intricate, and often painful dance between Black folks and politics has always been my path. I had an affinity for it then, and that fire has only intensified.

The truth is, it was never a stray. Every role I’ve taken outside of the political arena was just field research in different trenches, gathering skills for a fight I didn’t even know was coming. My commitment has always been to MY community, and one cannot be committed to Black people without being committed to understanding politics.

My work then, and now as a PhD candidate, is rooted in a fundamental truth: American politics was historically the primary tool for designing and perpetuating the systemic disenfranchisement of Black people. It is a system embedded with a racial hierarchy that was intentionally architected to survive long past the Emancipation Proclamation (Bell, 1992). Understanding that isn't pessimism; it's precision.

That young woman on the ID wanted to change the system from the inside. Today, I know the fight is on all fronts. It’s why my passion for this work has expanded to creating spaces for our community to gather and learn, like my bookstore, because our stories and our knowledge are the fuel for our freedom.

That drive hasn’t changed a bit. Now, we just have more experience and a much bigger fight on our hands.

Time to get into some Good Trouble.

--References (because my inner PhD candidate insisted):Bell, D. A. (1992). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. Basic Books.