Dr. Leonie H. Mattison
Standing in the glow of a nation’s fractured hope, she declared: “Even in dark times, we not only dream, we do. We not only see what has been, we see what can be. We shoot for the moon, and then we plant our flag on it. We are bold, fearless, and ambitious. We are undaunted in our belief that we shall overcome; that we will rise up. This is American aspiration." These words live in my bones.
The words arrived not long before the United States formally recognized Juneteenth as a federal holiday, a long overdue acknowledgment of the pain and persistence of Black Americans. Juneteenth commemorates the delayed emancipation of enslaved people in Texas on June 19, 1865 — two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. That delay still echoes in our systems. In our struggles. In our leadership journeys.
Juneteenth is not just history. It is prophecy and mirror. It reminds us that freedom has never come all at once — and that even when we’re told we’re free, systems must be confronted before they truly release their grip. That is why Vice President Harris’s words do not read as political flourish. They read as intergenerational memory. They remind me of the long line of Black women who carried vision before the world gave them permission. Women who stood in the dark, not because they lacked light, but because they were the light — holding onto dreams not as distant hopes, but as daily practice.
I am one of their daughters. And like them, I lead not because I was unscarred, but because I chose to believe in what could be built from what had been broken. It is this kind of aspiration, not the kind made for slogans, but the kind shaped in grief, resistance, and quiet triumph that animates my leadership.
So, as I read the latest reports on DEI policy rollbacks and watched institutions quietly walk back their commitments to equity, I am reminded of the many times I sat in rooms where justice was treated as optional. Where belonging was discussed in metrics, not in truth and the people most impacted by harm were expected to stay silent to keep the peace. Where I, as a Black woman, was invited to lead but not to be fully seen. As the pain from these moments filled the room, I felt a familiar weight settle in my chest. It wasn’t just frustration. Nor was it only the exhaustion that follows yet another coded conversation about “campus culture.” What I felt was a deeper kind of grief. The inherited grief of knowing, in my body, that what was being discussed as a policy shift had life-altering consequences for those of us who live at the margins every day.
I remembered Malcolm X’s words: “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected … the most neglected.” I didn’t need a textbook to understand him. I have lived that truth in silence and in public, in meetings and at bargaining tables, in moments when I was asked to stabilize systems that were never designed to protect me.
