During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, I undertook a quiet project: collecting and archiving my family’s oral history and heritage in South Carolina. Throughout this journey, I uncovered many events, stories and moments that I never imagined I’d have the opportunity to dig into. This project also opened up very meaningful conversations with my loved ones that gave me an even deeper understanding and appreciation for the “strong stock I come from”.
Carrie Nelson is my maternal great-great grandmother. She is recorded in a late 1800 census taken in the marsh and sharecropping lands of South Carolina, alongside her husband and children. Unfortunately, while giving birth to her youngest child, she passed away. As I reflect on the lineage that has bloomed beyond her death, I wonder who she would’ve been and what she could’ve accomplished with even a fraction of the resources I have available to me now. It’s a contemplation that drives me to honor the legacy she never had a chance to bear witness to on this side.
The Carrie Nelson Foundation is not just another organization that wants to operate within an echo chamber. It is a lifestyle, a praxis, and a divine birthright that I am honored to assume and embody. Every program here is entirely funded and operated by myself and my chosen family/Board of Directors. We are here in service to you, hoping to make Mama Carrie and all of our loving, ancestral guides proud.
Love,
Najya
The Carrie Nelson Foundation 
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