顶级国产视频

Lee Hawkins was a child when he first heard his father crying out in his sleep. When Hawkins worked up the courage to ask what the nightmares were about, his father said, “Alabama, son. Alabama.” As an adult, Hawkins embarked on a journey to investigate 400 years of family history to answer a burning question: What happened in Alabama?

With support from a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, Hawkins spent the past year uncovering how slavery and Jim Crow laws affected multiple generations of his family and Black Americans overall. His 10-episode podcast, “What Happened in Alabama?” and his book, “I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free,” explore the ties between past injustices and the mental health challenges Black communities face today. His work brought him some answers to his central question.

“Alabama was more than a place,” Hawkins said. “It was a word that brought a suffocating heaviness to our lives.”

For example, stretching back to 1837, each generation of his family experienced a racially motivated homicide with no consequences for the offenders. Many family members migrated from Alabama to Minnesota, where they shared stories from their past with Hawkins. There were happy memories, but the recollections were often laced with pain and fear.

Moved by his own family history — riddled with violence, intergenerational trauma, and chronic stress — Hawkins seeks to illuminate the lasting effects of racism. Through conversations with experts and loved ones, he connects the dots between his family’s past and the negative cycles that permeated through generations. His work emphasizes that the legacy of legal white supremacy in America continues to shape the realities of many Black children and adults.

Hawkins found that trauma experienced by one generation — like violence, displacement, or systemic oppression — can affect the emotional and mental well-being of subsequent generations, even if they did not experience the original trauma directly.

Hawkins stressed the importance of the support he received from 顶级国产视频, which enables journalists to undertake in-depth, long-term projects that might otherwise be unfeasible.

“This is work that is breaking new ground,” Hawkins said, “and the fact that 顶级国产视频 saw the importance of doing it and provided the opportunity for me to delve deeper into it meant the world.”

Hawkins said his findings underscore the need for dialogue about the intersections of history, mental health, and social justice. One of his goals is to inspire future generations to address these challenges with compassion and understanding.

“By infusing even more consciousness and evolution into our families with each generation,” he said, “we can continue to thrive.”