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Wildest Dreams

‘My people are powerful’

What parents, siblings, friends and cousins taught these 16 Philadelphians about their legacy.
Raven Palmer, 24. "So I think that I learned within my family that two cultures, two individuals, two humans coming together and meeting to create a life, that’s going to live a totally different life and try to break some of those stereotypes of both worlds, I think that’s incredible."Read moreMONICA HERNDON / Staff Photographer

This past spring it felt like things were looking up.

The sun shined, the days grew longer and more people were getting vaccinated. I felt a sense of optimism after a cold winter. As part of the Wildest Dreams anthology, we set out to talk with Black Philadelphians about legacy and identity.

In three Philadelphia parks we photographed people with varied experiences and cultural upbringings. We posed the same question to everyone:

What did you learn from your family about your Blackness?

Some had an immediate answer, others had to think about it or have a long and winding conversation. With this portrait series we included a snippet of those conversations, in their own words.

Wildest Dreams is a multimedia anthology centered on Black inheritance, legacy, and joy presented by the Black journalists of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

This compilation of articles, poetry, videos, photographs, and music explores what being Black means to Black people as we create a space for Black writers, photographers, videographers and designers to share their work, and to show that our stories matter.

Join our Wildest Dreams community on Instagram to take part in the conversation, or sign up for our newsletter for a behind-the-scenes look at the project. You can also listen to the music that inspired the Wildest Dreams project on Spotify.

Angelita Brown, Cydney Brown 17, and Kayla Brown, 20. “Learning what my Blackness means through my family has been just connecting with my sister and my mom,” Cydney Brown said. “I would say since she was born in Jamaica she has a lot of different folk tales or stories or things that she’ll share with me... And that’s always been a great part for us to bond with. And for me to realize that my identity is really broad, because sometimes I don’t even notice that my Jamaican culture is so fused with my American Black identity.”Read more
“The way that we go about our lives is a daily practice of making family, and making community and making villages,” said Chris Rogers, 32. “And it’s critical that we do that work, not as an activist, or organizer or an educator, not as any sort of professional role, but it’s just the daily work of getting by, and getting over and getting out.”Read more
“Everybody has their spin about being Black,” said Betty Wilson, 71. “Not to be ashamed. Great people are Black people. Doing great things. Coming from great places. Inventors, brilliant minds.”Read more
In Your Words
We never really talked about our Blackness, we kind of just lived it.
Darren Burton, 32
Timika Battle, 43, “We come from a long line of strong ladies. Like my grandmother worked in Congress for a long time. And my great grandmother was a very strong pioneer woman, she came from slave times. I learned a lot from my grandparents. It means everything to be Black. I love the skin I’m in. Even though I’m mixed race, I’m still Black at the end of the day, so I love my Blackness.”Read more
“We always had mindsets where, ‘Hey, you have to be successful but when you’re successful make sure that you really are going that much harder in your life because you are Black,’” said Darren Burton, 32.Read more
In Your Words
My parents taught me that being Black is everything, it’s not just what you see on TV.
Asia Nasir, 20
“I learned to appreciate my Blackness from people that lack Blackness. Like from hanging around people that may be of another ethnicity, made me appreciate my culture and where I came from,” said Michael Reddick, 26. “So once I was able to separate myself from people of my own ethnicity and be around other people, I started to notice that the Black community has a lot of gifts and a lot of things that other people see as a plus, but Black people themselves don’t see it as such.”Read more
Kamau Blakney, 48. “I think about just happiness and pride. Happiness for all of the talents that I work on, that I’ve been exposed to, that I’ve been shown over the years.Read more
Vernon Jordan III, 26. “My grandfather and grandma were building their family in the era of the Black arts movement and the Black power movement… And it was like, you’re going to be proud of who you are. You’re going to do everything that you need to do, and there’s going to be no questions about how smart you are, about how beautiful you are, about how capable you are… And they always provided a sense of comfort, even if they didn’t know the kind of internal battles that I was dealing with. Whenever I was over there, I felt kind of at peace and that I could just release all of that and just play and just be with my grandparents.”Read more
In Your Words
It means everything to be Black. I love the skin I’m in.
Timika Battle, 43
Juniper Jones, 23. “I kind of think about as you're walking through day to day life, how the geographical landscape can kind of stain you mentally or emotionally. As a kid coming up in Detroit, it was always like, I know I belong to this place. I know I belong to these people.”Read more
Asia Nasir, 20. “My parents taught me that being Black is everything, it’s not just what you see on TV, it’s everything beautiful, it’s everything ugly, it’s just everything.”Read more
In Your Words
I think that my people are very powerful, if they could just see themselves for who they are.
Chanel Wilson, 36
Kamau Blakney, 48. I have a lot of “pride in the successes and contributions and challenges that so many folks in the African diaspora have made such a contribution to this world, to this universe, to our local area.”Read more
In Your Words
So what it means to be Black for me is to have a community I can always connect with and know that they are there to support me.
Cydney Brown, 17
Yolanda Garner “My grandmother, who kind of held our whole family together and the roots that she brought with her from South Carolina. And just how I try to allow her legacy to live through me and try to keep our family together. I’m an only child, my mom was the youngest, but I never felt alone or lonely because I have tons of family always around. So that was what she left me with.”Read more
Raymond Gibbs, 78. “I came from Charleston South Carolina, I was raised down the South. I see the difference from what white people were paid and what Black people were paid, doing the same job. All because of the color of our skin. They figure that we weren’t worth what the white people were worth, although we do the same job, and sometimes we do it better than them. So after I came up here, I made sure that my kids have a college education.”Read more
“There were a lot of times I was the only black person in the room. It happened a lot in high school, [and] it happened a lot in college,” said Feenyx Alexander, 47. “I’m not going to come in like, ‘Oh gosh,’ scared of everyone. What would my grandmother do? She would just walk in as if none of that mattered. And so you walk in as if none of that matters. You come, you sit down and you participate, you get your grades, you go home.”Read moreMONICA HERNDON / Staff Photographer

Staff Contributors

Photojournalist: Monica Herndon

Design & Development: Dain Saint

Editing: Danese Kenon, Jamila Robinson

Digital: Kerith Gabriel, Jessica Parks

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