The Price of Being First

Say their names: Jack Johnson, Madame C.J. Walker, Hattie McDaniel, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, Dorothy Dandridge, Nat King Cole, Ruby Bridges, Shirley Chisholm, Colin Powell, Mae Jemison, Barack Obama

Do you know them?

You might recognize all or most of names listed above. They were “firsts”, Black individuals who broke racist barriers in sports, business, politics, show business, and more and proved to a racist society that Black people are equal in every way but have systematically been denied opportunities to fully participate in society.

Just because there was a first…

Just because there was a first doesn’t mean that subsequent individuals had an easy time of it when they took the same path. Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar in 1940 for her role in Gone with the Wind. Sixty-one years later, Hallie Berry won an Oscar in 2001 for her role in Monster’s Ball. Sidney Poitier won an Oscar in 1963, the first Black male actor to win an Oscar. It would be another thirty-eight years before Denzel Washington would win an Oscar in 2001 for his role in Training Day.

Society is slow to change

I remember waiting for hours in line in 2008 to see Barack Obama campaign for president in Charlotte, NC. I was with my daughter and her future husband. We were picked out of the line to sit in the bleachers behind Obama. Twenty-thousand people showed up. Just let that sink in for a moment. Twenty-thousand.

I’ll never forget that day. A sense of community and shared purpose embraced us. Obama’s warm voice and words of hope brought tears to my eyes. At the end of his speech, he shook hands with the crowd. I stuck my hand through the horde, and he shook it, his hand warm and his shake firm. I turned to my daughter, tears flowing, and she said, “He shook your hand, didn’t he?” I could only nod, I was so overcome with elation and joy.

I came away filled with hope for a better future, for a better country. The next eight years proved to be a study in opposites. Hope pitted against hate. I knew then, it would be a cold day in hell before another Black man or woman would be elected president. And, worse, I understood that the “remedy” to a Black president would be the antithesis to equality. And here we are.

But firsts are still important

We still have to have firsts, though. And they are still happening. In my research for this blog, Wiki was still listing “firsts” in 2026 including Laila Edwards for being the first Black woman to win a gold medal in ice hockey in the Olympics. All that means is that this country has a very long way to go.

There are the famous firsts, and there are the thousands of quiet firsts

My husband, Ronald, was one of the first Black firefighters hired at the Syracuse Fire Department after a federal consent decree ordered the city to align its hiring with the demographics of its population. On his first day, his officer told him he’d never worked with a “n-word” before. A union rep on his shift told him he’d never represent him. Several of his firefighter “brothers in service” said they’d do everything in their power to wash him off the job. They said he took a different test (he didn’t) and that he took the job from a deserving white man (he didn’t). And after they saw him with me, it got worse.

He became the third Black officer in the history of the department. I told him he didn’t want to be the first. They would have crushed him. I spent the next twenty-five years not just worried that he’d get injured fighting fires, but that they’d leave him to die.

Firefighting is one of the most stressful jobs, but add the pressure of knowing your coworkers don’t want you there, and the stress can be unbearable. He once told me, “They never let me enjoy being a firefighter.” But my husband showed up everyday for twenty-five years, until I told him I was done. Not him. He wanted to work three more years and possibly get one more promotion. But I was done. I’d seen the toll it took on him. On me, too.

Read more about his experiences as a firefighter in my memoirs

No one talks about the personal price one pays to be the first

“Think of the doors that were opened,” people have said of my husband’s career. Other Black firefighters who came after him thanked him for paving the way. But very few thought about the personal price he paid, or that thousands of others paid, when they became the first on their fire or police departments, or on the city council, or at the executive level in a company, or, as six-year-old Ruby Bridges, who just wanted to go to school, did in 1960 in New Orleans, when she walked into her new school, thereby desegregating the schools. She had to be escorted by Federal Marshalls because adults were spitting on her and yelling racial epithets.

And the problem is, the doors may have been opened, but they keep being slammed shut again. We wouldn’t be where we are today if that weren’t true. We wouldn’t have an administration actively erasing history; a Supreme Court that dismantled the Voting Rights Act and is systematically taking away other rights; banned books; and people snatched from their homes, cars, and at work and deported for no good reason.

And yet, people pay a personal toll to be first and make it possible for others to follow. They suffer emotional, physical, and mental pain, but they still do it. They keep showing up. Never forget the price they pay and how many have paid it and keep paying it, because this country is stuck on being something it never has been: all white.

The theme of firsts in A Cadence Mystery

The fictional town of Cadence in my A Cadence Mystery series is a first in many ways. It is a utopian multicultural community founded in 1789, and it functions as a true democracy based on the principles of Onondaga governance. The trouble comes from the outside and from the tragic, racially-motivated and violent secrets of the past that demand to be heard. But like the thousands of men, women, and children who were firsts and took it on the chin so others can follow in their paths, the people of Cadence keep showing up. They’re open to learning about the past in order to heal and grow stronger as a community. The characters pay the ultimate price in Creature of Secret Sorrows, book 7 of the series, but they also find healing and hope.

Read the latest installment in the series or start at the beginning.

Acknowledge the price paid

There will always be heroic people who step up to be first. They don’t need to hear platitudes about how they opened doors that they know may well be slammed shut for others after they pass through. Perhaps what they need to hear is that we acknowledge the price paid to be first and that we will walk with them so they won’t feel so alone. They will be supported in community, like the way my characters are supported in the community of Cadence. And, together, we’ll work like hell to ensure the door isn’t slammed shut so that the next person can walk through, too. We can be a better country, if we work together.