Before I Was Born, the Map Was Already Drawn

I was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1967 the last child of my parents, but the conditions waiting for my generation had already been decided decades earlier.

In 1919, city engineer Henry Allen produced an official map dividing Syracuse by ethnicity and race. Neighborhoods were labeled plainly: Jewish. Polish. Italian. And in thick, unmistakable writing  Negro.

The Red Line Districts were marked for no mortgages , economic perpetual poverty and other neighborhoods were not even allowed to rent to Negroes thus making Syracuse a social prison camp for me and my people.

The Government said the street and area I was born on was " occupied by the lowest type of the colored race " Me my Family , my Friends and Neighbors were written off , not to survive or be productive but to be predestined for prison and/ or generational poverty . The government had a willing ally in The National Urban League

Long before I arrived, the city had already determined where people like us were expected to live, what opportunities would surround us, and how far we were likely to rise. Investment flowed to some neighborhoods and avoided others. Loans were approved in certain areas and denied in others. Roads and industry carved through communities deemed expendable.

By the time my family arrived, the blueprint was already in place. And like so many families in the 1950s, mine came north from Alabama and Florida seeking opportunity in a rapidly changing America. Farming life in the South was giving way to urban living, and families chased stability wherever it seemed possible.

Alabama Cherokee and Mvskoke Creek Indians from Alabama and Florida my Great Grandmother ( Middle Right photo) and her Sisters

The first to leave was my Uncle Claude aka Sonny to everyone who loved him. He left Mims and Titusville, Florida, guitar in hand, chasing music and possibility. He landed first in Brooklyn and Harlem, performing with a group before eventually finding steady work in Syracuse.

That decision shaped generations.

My grandmother, the matriarch, followed her son north. Soon her other children followed, including my mother. Because of that move, today I have hundreds of cousins, Nieces , Nephews and Family spread across Syracuse. One decision created a whole northern branch of our family tree.

Yet we never truly left the South behind.

Our family still holds land in Conecuh County, Alabama. Our people owned land before Alabama even became a state. Land, farming, kinship  these weren’t stories to us. They were living memories. My grandmother made sure of that. In the 1980s she even wrote a family book documenting our lineage so future generations would not forget. My Father built a home on land he owns in Georgia and he was a Master Craftsman , A Union Man and Carpenter for over 30 years.

My Grandmother at 93 with my Aunts and my Mother in her home in Florida

From my Mother’s lineage

We always knew who we were: Cherokee and Mvskoke Indian, with African and Scottish ancestry mixed in through history’s realities. Identity in our home wasn’t confusion it was inheritance.

But government paperwork didn’t see it that way.

Growing up, I lived squarely inside what Syracuse maps and housing authorities once marked as Negro districts ,the 15th Ward and surrounding neighborhoods. My father lived across from the Dunbar Center raising my Siblings. Later we owned property at Rose and Oakwood, right in the heart of the same area.

That was home. Where we played, walked, fought, laughed, survived.

But those neighborhood lines carried consequences we didn’t fully understand as children. Being in those districts often meant banks wouldn’t lend to families there. Home ownership was harder or impossible. Renting became the default. Wealth couldn’t accumulate or pass down. Surrounding communities built equity while ours struggled just to stay afloat.

The government wasn’t simply labeling neighborhoods, it was limiting futures.

By sixteen, I was already on my own, navigating adulthood earlier than most. Thankfully, the extended family stepped in. My Godmother and the Boyd family gave guidance and stability while I figured out life. I still graduated from Henninger High on time, even while helping raise a younger friend ( Lamar )  who became like a brother to me. Two young men, one from Detroit, one from Syracuse trying to dodge every pitfall society seemed ready to throw at us.

But questions about identity kept surfacing.

The first real collision came after high school when I joined the military in 1986. Overseas, an officer hurled racist slurs at my friend Hank and treated us like targets simply because of how we looked. We were teenagers wearing the same uniform, serving the same country. When things turned physical the Officers took the L , The military police tried to make examples of us, but the truth prevailed and we were cleared.

Still, the lesson stuck: sometimes you become a target simply for existing.

Then I returned home in 1988 and something else had changed. It was life changing.

Suddenly people were calling me African American.

I’d never heard the term applied to me growing up. Nobody asked permission. Nobody explained it. One day I left as Black; I returned two years later labeled something new. At twenty years old, it felt like identity had been reassigned while I was gone. What happened in the United States while I was living overseas? 

Confused, I went to the one person who always grounded me, my grandmother. She listened, patient as ever, and reminded me who we were. Indigenous roots first, African and European ancestry woven through, but never erased. She guided me without force, even as I continued finding my own spiritual path through Islam. She simply reminded me to remember my foundation and build a family rooted in truth. 

A few years later, another defining moment arrived.

My Mother spent the 70's as a community activist and poet in Syracuse working with Churches and Grassroots organizations

After the Rodney King beating shocked the nation, my Mother organized a community march in Syracuse to protest police brutality. She and my Godmother rallied neighbors, families, and church members to stand up peacefully.

Two organizations were approached for support: the NAACP and the Urban League.

The NAACP’s Van Robinson met the marchers at the destination and stood with the community. But the Urban League declined involvement entirely. For my Mother, it was a revealing moment, a firsthand lesson in how politics, caution, and institutional priorities sometimes distance organizations from grassroots action.

But she never backed down. Strength runs in our blood. The march succeeded because the community moved forward anyway.

And over time, I began to see how families like mine Indigenous-rooted people absorbed into the broad Negro classification often found themselves represented politically and socially in ways that didn’t always reflect their full identity or historical experience. Decisions made in offices and boardrooms, sometimes far from neighborhoods like ours, shaped policies and programs affecting countless families trying simply to live and be recognized.

Our story wasn’t unique.

It was shared.

The people never disappeared.

They were renamed, relocated, and administratively reorganized but they remained.

And my life, like so many others born into those mapped districts, is proof.

Next Chapter : “When Records Began Confirming What Grandma Already Knew.”

FIRST TRIBE