Were more vital to me than fashion magazines, and the faded photographs from the turn of the 20th century interested me far more than the noise on social media. At thirty years old, I was almost at the finish line of my life’s goal: the final stage of writing my dissertation on the history of Black entrepreneurship along D.C.’s U Street corridor during the Great Migration. This work was my passion, my heir, my escape from the gray reality of a working-class apartment building.