Brittany Packnett Cunningham

I do dream when I get to sleep.

But let me tell you what I'm praying for.

I used to be a teacher, which y'all know.

And so I'm a backwards planner.

I always think of the end first.

And then I think about how we plot a path to the ultimate goal.

And I'm really glad for that part of my professional background because it matches very much my spiritual and ancestral background around understanding the importance of radical imagination.

I understand that my existence is because enslaved Africans in this country envisioned a freedom that did not exist for them.

That is very literally the only reason why I'm here.

Because they envisioned that, they imagined it, they prayed for it, and then they worked for it.

And they plotted a path backwards from that goal.

To where they were and they rebelled and they protected and they kept safe and they passed the word and they passed the story and they passed the song and they passed the faith.

That is why I am here.

I am here because two of my ancestors, James and Ebenezer, fought in the Civil War and the U.S.

Colored Troops to free themselves.

And then when both of them died before seeing emancipation, one of them who was captured and re-enslaved, one of them who was killed on the field of battle, when both of them died, it was their pension from the U.S.

colored troops that went back to the Dixon family on my mother's side that held three generations that my four-time great-grandmother, Joanna, managed to keep together through enslavement and into emancipation.

That pension is what funded them.

So I am very clear on the power of seeing what is not as though it is and then matching my works with my faith.

And so everything I get up and do every day, everything I get up and pray about when I ask God to tell me and show me what to do that day, who to talk to, what to pray about, what to not do, what to not say.