An Immigrant Family Moves Through Generational Trauma

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/ [login to see] /civil-rights-generational-trauma-story
Colette Baptiste-Mombo, a television engineer and community organizer, was born in 1958, at the height of the civil rights movement.

Baptiste-Mombo's parents came from different immigrant backgrounds — while her mother was from northern England and immigrated to the U.S. from Wales, her father was born in the Bronx. His family was from Jamaica.

While Baptiste-Mombo was growing up in New York City, African Americans across the country were fighting to end racial discrimination.

"We read stories about Jim Crow and segregation and lynching. But we don't read stories about what happens in between that, while civil rights was being played out," she says.

When Baptiste-Mombo was seven years old, she and her family moved from Queens, NY, to the suburbs of Jackson Township, NJ.