The Number 43
Ahead of Juneteenth this year, Kentucky's governor did something rare. He looked back at history and found 43 people who had been locked away for helping enslaved men, women, and children escape to freedom. Elijah Anderson. Julett Miles. Thomas Brown. Forty of others. Men and women who broke an unjust law because a just one didn't exist yet. Some died in prison for it. All of them waited more than a century to be called what they always were. Heroes, not criminals. The governor pardoned all 43. It took more than a hundred years. Justice came, but it came too late for them to feel it. That's the part that stays with us. We are 43 too. We didn't plan that. None of us chose the number. We found each other on X, one story at a time, each of us carrying a case that never should have ended the way it did. By the time we counted, there were 43 of us. We noticed the coincidence. We're not going to pretend it means something mystical. But we can't stop thinking about w...