Today Is About Self-Determination-Happy Kwanzaa

Today is Kujichagulia — Self-Determination, and it’s also my great-grandfather A.J. Smitherman’s birthday.

Kujichagulia is about naming ourselves and telling our own stories — not allowing others to define us, edit us, or extract meaning without consent.

A.J. Smitherman didn’t interpret history years later.

He documented it as it happened — through his newspaper, the Tulsa Star, and through an epic poem he wrote in the aftermath of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

I’ve been quiet here for a while — not because the work stopped, but because it deepened.

Today marks an important moment:

The release of the book documenting A.J. Smitherman’s work
The formal launch of the A.J. Smitherman Foundation
The continuation of Black Wall Street 100 as a movement rooted in authorship and truth

This community understands something essential:

self-determination begins with authorship.

👉 If you want to explore the record directly — the book, the Foundation, and the source material — you can find everything here:

AJSmitherman.com

I’ll be sharing more regularly here again — context, documents, and reflections that don’t always belong on social media.

If you’re here, you’re early — and you’re in the right room.

Kujichagulia.

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