In writing Arlinda's story I made seemingly endless decisions about what information to include and what to set aside. I wanted to ground her life in historical context because she lived through genuinely momentous events. The world around her shaped who she became, and I felt readers deserved to understand that backdrop.

My first instinct was to go deep into Civil Rights history. I researched the relationship between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. I explored Supreme Court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson. I studied how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC strategically planned acts of civil disobedience, knowing exactly how their opponents would respond, and documenting the bullying. It all seemed necessary. I added more historic anecdotes, and still it needed more.

But the more I wrote, the more I realized I was burying Arlinda under layers of history. All of that context, no matter how accurate or important, pulled the reader away from her actual life. This story was about Arlinda.

I learned to trust her story first. I kept the focus on Arlinda and her immediate family. When I did reference larger historical events, I kept most of them brief with a phrase here, a short scene there. I front-loaded these cultural references in the first few chapters so readers could orient themselves to the times.

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was different. That moment deserved more space because it was visceral and personal. I depicted Arlinda and her family taking in the news, wrestling with what came next, and I showed how Arlinda embraced her Blackness in response. I trusted readers to make those connections without spelling them out.

If someone finishes this book wanting to know more about Ida B. Wells or the planning behind specific protest campaigns, I would hope they would follow their curiosity. I included a References section specifically to give them those jumping off points. There are excellent biographies and histories out there. My job was not to duplicate them.

Arlinda's story adds one voice to the chorus of how we understand this era. That is where I could contribute something genuine.