In 1987, I was just 18 — a college freshman at the University of Tampa and a brand-new Army Reservist trying to earn a $4,000 bonus. What should’ve been a routine weekend drill turned into one of the wildest, most dangerous journeys of my life.  No car. No money. No phone. Just a uniform, a highway, and the belief that I could walk 80 miles from Orlando back to Tampa — because, at that age, I thought I was invincible.  In this episode, I share how that long, dark walk down I-4 became a defining lesson about freedom, faith, and foolishness. From begging for food at a gas station to crawling under a resort fence just to use a phone, to being rescued by a kind Black couple at night — this story is about more than survival.  It’s about what it truly meant to be Black Gen X — the first generation told we were “free to move,” yet still learning that freedom didn’t always mean safety.  🎧 Tune in as I unpack how one night on a Florida highway revealed what Traveling While Black Gen X really felt like — equal parts courage, ignorance, and grace.

D'Angelo, the soul and R&B great whose three albums — 'Brown Sugar,' 'Voodoo,' and 'Black Messiah' — are all revered as modern classics, has died.

YouTube video by In the KNOW with Tony Reeves

In this episode, I reflect on the unique reality of being part of Black Gen X—caught between two worlds that often felt at odds. Our parents, mostly Baby Boomers, grew up under segregation and faced open hostility, while we were the first generation to come of age in a fully desegregated society. I share my story of growing up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas—a majority-Black town in a majority-White state—where I saw both the nurturing support of Black communities and the subtle hostilities that lingered outside of them. I explore the shift from “hard bigotry” to “soft bigotry,” the absence of a blueprint for navigating this new reality, and the ways both Black and White Gen X had to learn by trial and error. This is a conversation about resilience, identity, and how Gen X forged its own path without letting the weight of the past hold us back.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, our lives changed overnight. Schools shut down, graduations moved to front lawns, and families were thrown into a reality no one had prepared for. Even after two years, many were left traumatized by the sudden shift.  But what if we take that same lens and look back further? Imagine living under 90 years of Jim Crow and then seeing those laws vanish virtually overnight. For Black Gen X, that was our inheritance — growing up in a desegregated society that our parents and grandparents had never experienced, with no roadmap to guide us.  In this episode, I connect the shock of the pandemic to the deeper historical transition after Jim Crow, showing how Gen X became the generation raised without a blueprint.  📚 This conversation is one of the central themes in my new book, Black Gen X in the Middle. Leave a comment on the YouTube version of this episode and request a free code for a copy!

Columnist Corey Richardson writes about the impact of the tragic death of actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner on Black Gen X and what he meant to us.