Annie B. Harris always looked up to her father. A large group of white men was under his supervision at a plant. It was no easy feat for a Black man in the 1960s, especially in a rural Georgia community steeped in racial oppression. In spite of this, he had a firm, no-nonsense presence that commanded respect. She learned a valuable lesson from watching him earn respect in that environment: “Respect is about the way you carry yourself and how you handle adversity,” she says.

“I learned my strength from watching how he carried himself and how he dealt with people who he knew hated him,” she continues.

She even witnessed it firsthand when she was around the age of nine. “I can remember walking down the tree-lined streets in my hometown, and it was a white neighborhood. We were going to visit one of his other supervisors. I was holding his hand,” she recalls. “And this small white boy ran down the sidewalk, passed us, and called my dad the N-word. He said this to my hero, I mean, my everything. And I didn’t quite know what the word meant, but I knew it was bad.”

Upset, she turned to her father and asked, “Why did that little boy do that?” If he was bothered, it didn’t show.

“And he said, baby, it’s a bad word. It doesn’t mean anything to me. He’s just a bad little boy. He stayed cool, calm, and collected and continued,” Annie says. “And, you know, that’s how he dismissed it. And when I realized what the word meant and how he reacted to it, it helped me build my self-esteem,” Annie says.