Dear Ms. Lunelle,
Years ago, as I stood outside Osceola High School with the Southern Cross in hand a middle-aged lady and the 5-year-old baby boy with her would come to where I stood.
She, like the four men who paid for my gas at the County line along with a $50 bill, knew my name and why I had journeyed to Osceola, Missouri. She would hand me a $20 bill, and the baby boy wanted to know why.
“It is because he is our hero,” she replied.
He asked her for some money to give to me. She told him to thank me for starting his allowance and counted out “$1 for Church, $1 for Mr.HK, and $1 for your bank.”
I would receive an anonymous letter from Osceola, Missouri on Monday, August 12, 2024, just like the one I have received every month for the last twenty years with a one-dollar donation. However, this time it was for twenty-one dollars.
Approximately twenty years ago the Honorable Dewey Barber, the owner of Dixie Outfitters, the foremost outfitter of Southern Heritage clothing would inform me that a young man had done a Black History Report upon the request from his History Teacher at his High School [Osceola High] in Osceola, Missouri on a Black heroine or hero who positively impacted History.
The young man chose me. He would highlight my journey on the Historic March Across Dixie, several of my Southern Heritage speeches, the Capitol at Columbia, South Carolina in the year 2000 to keep the Southern Cross atop the Capitol Dome in Columbia, the speech at Gettysburg College to demand the dismantling of a Gallo meant to hang the Confederate Battle Flag.
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