Two weeks ago on October 30, 2020, I found myself sitting in the Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International (BWI) Airport Terminal A3 departure lounge awaiting my connecting flight to Charlotte Douglas (CLT) Airport on a long transcontinental day that started at Las Vegas McCarran (LAS) Airport. To pass the time away I began doing finger strengthening exercises. Next thing I know, a fellow traveler sits down close to me with his meal and asks what I was doing. The vast majority of other travelers were exercising their thumbs on their smart phones and tablets; so I could see how I stood out. Anyways, I tell him I was exercising my fingers for my work. He then asks what I do. I said, “I’m a writer.” He says, “So am I.” His next question was what I was working on. My answer was I was working on a series of books about the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina response. He then says he deployed to the New Orleans 9th Ward with a Christian organization on a humanitarian mission. I said I independently deployed down to the New Orleans 7th Ward.

There’s more. I commenced to share how on September 7, 2005, I dropped everything, left my home in Southern Nevada and flew down to the Gulf Coast to also join the Katrina Relief Effort. I found myself sitting in Houston George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) Airport trying to decide what to do next. This is where I received a call from family in my hometown informing me that New Orleans evacuees were on their way up north. So, I catch a connecting flight to Omaha Eppley (OMA) Airfield. This is when the fellow BWI traveler says, “The Northside?” I said yes I’m from North Omaha. He said, “I know the Northside.” 

The third thing. He then began to introduce himself. A visiting scholar in the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley; a “diasporan” historian, meaning that he documents and explores the relationships of “Black” people with one another around the globe. I bring it all home by saying I launched the Afromation Educational Movement to Integrate American History twenty-six years ago. However, my New Orleans research findings from The Contraflow Project dominated our BWI Terminal A conversation. Before I could learn more about his research and talk about AFROMATION, my flight began the boarding process. I gave him a business card, and elbow bump, adjusted my facial mask and disappeared into the sea of Carolina-bound travelers. After I got settled in South Carolina that evening, I noticed an email from my BWI connection-connection: