Before he was a Super Bowl quarterback or an internationally recognized civil rights activist, Colin Kaepernick was a Black kid raised by white adoptive parents in Turlock, California. Like so many transracially adopted youth in majority-white towns, he used sports as both a proving ground and a gateway to belonging—a place where athletic performance felt like armor against the quiet friction of not matching the world around him.
This month, we celebrate Dr. Jennifer Noble (drjenntherapy.com). Those who joined us at Family Camp experienced firsthand how amazing Dr. Jenn is—her sessions were a highlight of our time together, offering invaluable wisdom on navigating the many layers of racial identity and giving parents actionable strategies to manage microaggressions with confidence.
Through her clinical practice, parent coaching, and youth resources, Dr. Jenn equips families to dismantle societal pressures and build strong emotional boundaries. Her dedication to uplifting our families makes her an outstanding example of Black excellence in mental health and community care.
When systemic failures and murky circumstances threaten to bury the truth, civil rights champion Attorney Ben Crump steps directly into the gap. Dedicating his legal practice to institutional accountability, Crump has become a fierce shield for Black and brown families navigating unimaginable loss in a world that routinely devalues their lives.
His work forces white-dominated systems to answer the hard questions that families are so often left holding alone. For transracial adoptive families, Crump’s advocacy serves as an unyielding example of what it means to demand absolute truth, protect the vulnerable, and refuse to let institutional transparency be compromised. True independence requires a community willing to aggressively stand up and defend its children—no matter how powerful the spaces they must disrupt.
Father’s Day tributes often gravitate toward comfortable, well-worn imagery: the backyard catch, the 
shared joke, the quiet wisdom dispensed from a favorite armchair. While these moments of joy are vital parts of the parenting tapestry, there is another, deeper dimension to fatherhood that rarely gets the mainstream spotlight it deserves. It is the role of the father as a shield, an intellectual guide, and an emotional steward.
This Father’s Day, as we celebrate Black Excellence, we look to the groundbreaking author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, who fundamentally redefined the "father-son talk" for the modern era. Through his National Book Award-winning masterpiece, Between the World and Me, Coates elevated a private act of fatherly love into a global cultural touchstone, shattering one-dimensional stereotypes and revealing the profound vulnerability at the heart of Black fatherhood.
The story of Coates’s defining work begins not in a quiet study, but in the raw reality of a father watching his child confront the world. In the mid-2010s, as images of systemic injustice dominated the news cycle, Coates’s teenage son, Samori, retreated to his bedroom and wept.
As a father, Coates faced a choice that millions of Black parents recognize all too well. He could offer empty, comforting platitudes, or he could offer the radical truth. He chose the truth.
Written explicitly as an extended letter to Samori, Between the World and Me became Coates’s way of anchoring his son. He didn't just write a critique of American history; he wrote a survival guide born out of a father's fierce, protective instinct. In doing so, Coates stepped into a proud literary lineage, directly channeling James Baldwin’s famous 1963 letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time. It proved that for generations, the transmission of Black history has been, at its core, an act of intimate family survival.
What makes Coates’s perspective on fatherhood an example of Black Excellence is his rejection of the stoic, detached patriarch trope. He replaces it with a model of deep emotional stewardship. To Coates, being a father isn't merely about providing food and shelter; it is about guarding a child’s mind and validating their humanity in a world that often tries to diminish it.
Throughout his writings, Coates acknowledges the unique terror that comes with raising a Black child—the constant anxiety over their physical safety and emotional well-being. Yet, he transforms that fear into a tool for empowerment. He treats his son not as someone to be sheltered from reality, but as a young man who deserves the intellectual clarity required to navigate it. It is a masterclass in respect; a father honoring his son's capacity to handle the weight of the truth.
The impact of Coates’s letter to his son extended far beyond his own household, reshaping the cultural narrative around Black fathers. For too long, media portrayals have lazily relied on harmful myths of paternal absence or emotional detachment. Coates blew those narratives apart, presenting a portrait of a Black father who is deeply plugged-in, intensely loving, and fiercely committed to his child's consciousness.
By sharing his vulnerability, Coates gave other fathers permission to feel, to fear, and to love out loud. He reminded us that the greatest gift a father can give a child is not a promise that the world will always be fair, but the armor of identity, history, and unconditional support.
This Father’s Day, as we celebrate the visionaries who build legacies, let us honor the fathers like Ta-Nehisi Coates—the men who use their words, their hearts, and their histories to ensure the next generation walks through the world with their heads held high.
When we discuss "Black Excellence," we often gravitate toward the glittering milestones: the firsts, the founders, and the record-breakers. But there is a more profound, more harrowing form of excellence that exists in the marrow of motherhood. It is the excellence of transmutation—the ability to take a world-shattering tragedy and forge it into a weapon for justice.
No one personified this more than Mamie Till-Mobley.
In August 1955, Mamie faced a horror that is every mother’s nightmare. Her 14-year-old son, Emmett, was lynched in Money, Mississippi. When his body was returned to Chicago in a pine box, the state of the remains was so graphic that authorities had ordered the casket to remain sealed.
At that moment, Mamie Till-Mobley made a decision that would redefine motherhood as a political force. "Let the people see what I’ve seen," she famously insisted.
By demanding an open-casket funeral, Mamie performed an act of radical transparency. She refused to allow the ugliness of white supremacy to be tucked away in a quiet grave. She forced the world to look at the face of its own cruelty, using her son’s body as a mirror for the nation’s soul. This wasn't just bravery; it was a strategic, intellectual, and spiritual masterstroke of excellence.
Excellence is often measured by impact, and Mamie’s impact was seismic. Her decision provided the visual fuel for the modern Civil Rights Movement. Months later, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, she noted that she thought of Emmett Till and "couldn't go back."
But Mamie’s excellence didn’t end at the funeral. She spent the next five decades ensuring her son’s name was synonymous with education rather than just victimhood. She became a dedicated teacher and a public speaker, teaching young people how to find their voices. She understood that memory is a form of resistance.
This Mother’s Day, as we celebrate Black Excellence, we must honor the "Mamie Till-Mobleys" of our history—the women who:
Refuse silence: Even when the world demands their quiet suffering.
Redefine legacy: Turning personal loss into communal liberation.
Protect the truth: Ensuring that the stories of their children are told with dignity and power.
Mamie Till-Mobley reminds us that Black motherhood is not just about nurturing life; it is about the fierce, uncompromising protection of a child’s humanity—even after they are gone. Her life was a testament to the fact that a mother’s love, when channeled through the lens of excellence, has the power to wake up the world.
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April shares her very personal experience as a transracially adopted person as she opens up a conversation about the beauty and complexity of adoption through interviews and reflections. Each episode is anchored in the months of the year, connecting poignant holidays, rituals, rites of passage, and celebrations to adoption, identity and family.