Autobiography
The Rashad Boys
Thomas, Noah, and Dad
Born into a Legacy of Love & Justice
I was born in 1975 on the southeast side of Gainesville, Florida—on the other side of the Civil Rights Movement, yet still well within its shadows.
I wasn’t born into power or privilege, but into a certain kind of presence—into an ethos of compassion, excellence, creative non-compliance, and joyful resistance.
My grandparents, Lonnie Mae and Richard Harrison, served as First Lady and Pastor of Faith Missionary Baptist Church. They showed up for our people during births, weddings, illness, and loss—despite coming of age in the darkness of American Apartheid. That deep, embodied commitment to love and justice runs through my family line.
My mother, Shirley Ann, was a nurse, an entrepreneur, and a community activist with the National Action Network. My father, who left school as a teenager, confronted segregation head-on. After sitting at a whites-only lunch counter, he was brutally beaten—his ribs broken, his hair set on fire, and his body thrown beside a dumpster.
Still, I grew up in a home pulsing with joyful anthems—Aretha, James Cleveland, Shirley Caesar, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, Barry White, Curtis Mayfield, the Isley Brothers, Earth, Wind & Fire—-and, I grew up with big questions. Deep ones.
The works of Fanon, Du Bois, and King helped me understand how schooling—especially in a culture of domination—often functions to reproduce the very inequities it claims to address. But I’ve also come to know that meaningful learning is transformative for the learner, for those who witness the transformation, and for the community.
While much of where I am from remains the same, in 1999, I chose to name myself for myself–kujichagulia, the Swahili word for self-determination. I laid down the name Robert Lee Minter, Jr., and rose up as Kaleb Rashad.
I am still learning.
Still growing.
Still unlearning.
Still listening.
Still loving.
Still pursuing justice.
Still centering humanity and dignity.
Still fighting for a world where learning is unbound, justice is joyful, and love is practiced daily—in our work, our relationships, and the places where we gather.
We are threads in a story not shaped by scarcity, but rather by a spirit of integrity in the face of deceit and courage in the face of brute force. A spirit of uncompromising, rebellious commitment to live free and love hard.
When Kendrick Lamar says, “I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA,” I feel that deeply.
Not a royalty of conquest, but of inheritance.
A lineage marked by dignity, mutual care, courage, creativity, and collective flourishing.
My purpose in this life is to build a world meant for all of us to know, to be, to live, and to care for one another as if our lives depended on it. With a little swag. A little humor and a lot of grace.
I carry this work for those who came before us, and for those yet to come—seven generations in both directions.
Kaleb Rashad, Ed.D.
“When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear–against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect–to find ourselves in the other”
–bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions