Not enough can be said about the queen Harriet Tubman. She is our black Moses. Freedom fighter. Union spy. Brilliant strategist. Abolitionist. God-fearing woman. Conductor of the Underground Railroad. Gangsta in the way that gangsta should be: warring against those who seek to oppress.

In 1952 my grandfather built a house for his wife and six children in a small South Carolina town. The house had four bedrooms, one bathroom, a dining room and a living room you could enter only if you were dressed in your Sunday best or entertaining company or if somebody had died. After my grandfather passed away,…