She pinned a printout of the hand to her corkboard and spent the rest of the day unable to focus on anything else.
By the third night, she hadn’t slept.
Her office filled with maps of Mississippi at the turn of the century, census tables, scholarly texts on Reconstruction’s collapse into intimidation and crackdown.
She searched for documented hand signals among enslaved communities and post-emancipation support networks.
Quilts.
Songs.
Biblical metaphors.
None matched what she saw. Continue reading…