The objective of the Honored Burden is to express the complexities, contradictions, tragedies, and triumphs of the American experience by telling it within the framework of poverty, race, class, religion, and politics. This honored American's experience springs from one of America's most rural and backwoods outposts imagined. It includes experiences from an era of sharecropping and the late fringes of Jim Crow. It blends the best of America's intent with the worst of American impulses. My story and experience are one of many that are often untold and unknown but are no less American. My race has endured a unique burden, yet I am proud and honored to be an American. The government of the people and by the people is a humanity challenge. I am a participant and witness full of hope and confidence that America will meet its challenge. Honored Burden uses thought-provoking stories in an attempt to disclose any of those complexities, contradictions, tragedies, and triumphs that amount to that challenge.