On January 22, 1954, I was born in Providence Hospital, the only issue from the union of Jonathan Melvin Ivy and Barbara Abrams.

My parents were the offspring of Black religious leaders. Jonathan’s father was Elder Berry B. Ivy, the administrative superintendent for the southern district of Missouri in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). Flora, Jonathan’s mother, was a national missionary in that religious order. Barbara’s father was Deacon Clarence Johnson, Senior, who sat on the board of the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church and was the lead baritone in their choir. He was a democratic ward committeeman in the era of patronage politics in Chicago. Odessa, Barbara’s mother, was a schoolteacher who chose to be a stay-at-home parent.

Jonathan grew up in the small town of Charleston, located in the boot hill region of Missouri. He had five brothers and four sisters, however, three of the girls died of tuberculosis in their teen years. Thelma was the only surviving sister. John A. was the oldest and only sibling who fought in WWII. Jonathan and his siblings were coming of age during this era of war.

America was a segregated society at that time. Black people and Whites lived in racially segregated areas throughout the country. There were no civil rights for Black people. Black people were governed by Jim Crow laws, which originated in the south after the Reconstruction period. When WWII ended, the Black soldiers returned home from Europe and other theaters of battle and demanded better treatment here in the U.S. Those soldiers united with black labor unions, black church leaders, and black college student spokesmen to demand civil rights and desegregation. They were tired of separate and inferior accommodations in civil society. This movement began in the churches and Black colleges in the south. It spread across the country like wind-driven wildfire. Initially, the white media paid little attention to the protest. As the white backlash progressed in violence, the civil rights movement gained political momentum. It culminated with every news cycle focused on the Black movement. The question of “What to do with the Negro?” dominated Sunday morning talk shows. Thousands of Black people were killed or injured during those white riots throughout the south. Elder Berry decided to send his sons and only daughter to Chicago for their safety.

Barbara was a nineteen-year-old former high school homecoming queen who aspired to be a top model. She grew up in a tight-knit Baptist family of five sisters and four brothers in Chicago’s south side. Jonathan and Barbara met as next-door neighbors on the south side of Chicago. However, the differences in their socio-religious backgrounds created its own tensions. As a result of his strict Pentecostal upbringing, he was unaware of the complex cultural nuances of big city life. She was the product of that fast-paced city culture. As a result, he inadvertently made comments that others perceived as insensitive moral judgments; and there were the gaffes that eventually sabotaged their relationship.

Jonathan lacked his father’s ‘gift of gab,’ but he developed the ability to speak and write fluently in Spanish and French. It