There’s something sacred about the way we do things.
Whether it’s a homegoing, a church service, or a college commencement, Black pomp and circumstance has its own rhythm: a choreography of care, history, and pride.
I thought about it this weekend as I sat in the sanctuary of the church I spent my childhood and young adulthood attending regularly. It was lined with so many flowers I couldn’t see the pulpit from the second pew. As I watched everyone sit on the right side, leaving most of the left open for the family to process in, I started thinking about how we just know. How customs are just rooted and observed through time. There’s an unspoken order to how we show up. A reverence that moves through us like a well-rehearsed hymn.
The same feeling rises at commencement. At Tougaloo, the drums start first — deep, resonant, ancestral — and suddenly we’re connected to something far older than the institution itself. It’s one thing to observe it, but it was a whole different thing to experience it as a graduate myself, trying to keep up with the march across campus to our seats. When I attend commencement to support new graduates, I’m reminded of that feeling but also am grounded in this ritual serving as a thread that ties all of us together over time. And I’m looking forward to feeling that feeling again when I go back for my silver graduation in a couple of years. It’s not just ceremony; it’s continuation. A declaration that our striving and our joy deserve a soundtrack.
In church, it’s the hymns that have survived generations. Sometimes when I sit in my church, I envision Deacon Jones starting the devotional and wish I could hear him call “I know I am a child of God” and wait for us to respond as a congregation. I miss the devotional because it just felt important in my bones. It felt deeply spiritual, and every now and then I sing it to myself, and as I sit here typing, I wonder what healing or comfort it’s providing that I don’t even realize. I can still hear Mother Curlie sing her special version of This Little Light of Mine, wondering if I’d ever be that voice that leads from the pews without ever touching the choir stand. I cherish the way I give countless hugs when I walk in on my way to my seat. I appreciate that when a word hits home, there’s always someone I can look at, and they just get it without me saying anything.
Even in our everyday lives, the rituals are there. The “say thank you” that echoes from moms through the generations, the debates about whether or not fish and spaghetti go together, the connections through memories of fried chicken Wednesdays on varied HBCU campuses, the plastic-covered furniture or the wooden panel walls in your grandmother’s living room that somehow we all reminisce about. The details that shape us, bind us, and make us smile when we realize how universal they are.
Black pomp and circumstance isn’t about extravagance. It’s about intention. It’s how we show love, how we hold history, how we make meaning out of moments both monumental and ordinary. It’s ceremony as language. Beauty as inheritance.
We’ve been curating sacredness for centuries — in our grief, in our joy, in our striving, in our rest. Whether it’s a processional, a praise, or a favorite meal on a particular day, the message beneath it all remains the same:
We matter enough to mark the moment.
Soundtrack of My Life: Total Praise by Richard Smallwood
Real Middle School Mom of Atlanta 