COLUMN: Navigating Father Wounds As A Black Man In America

Art Credit:& Robert H. Marshall Jr. By Robert H. Marshall Jr. At the Waymaker Black Male Leadership Summit, Chicago was alive with Black excellence. I had the privilege of sitting down with some of the realest brothers out there—food critic Keith Lee, former NFL star and actor Devale Ellis, young mogul Ian Michael Brock, BET’s Louis Carr, Black Enterprise’s Alfred Edmond Jr. and therapist Dr. Jay Barnett.& Each man, no matter how far he’d come, had a common thread: the role of fathers and male figures who shaped them. Some of their fathers brought tough love, others came with wisdom or guidance, and even those who stumbled left lessons in their wake. They made one thing clear—without those figures, they wouldn’t be where they are. But for every brother who shared a story about his father, it cut deep. There I was, a grown man, ashamed and embarrassed, feeling like a little boy playing dress up in a grown man’s body. In that moment being reminded of my father’s wounds. Man, this ache never goes away—it’s a wound that doesn’t heal; you just learn to carry it. One brother summed it up best: “A man without his father is like...