I read Akiba Solomon for the first time in the early 2000s when she was a senior editor at The Source magazine. While Akiba's penchant for crafting sentences was on par with some of the greatest scribes of that era, it was her ability to structure features, interviews, and investigative pieces that made the fledgling young writer in me so jealous. This underappreciated ability to thoughtfully and imaginatively curate and structure prose is most wonderfully on display in the book she co-edited with Ayana Byrd, Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts. As the current editorial director of Colorlines, Akiba has written and edited some of the most important pieces in the country around intersectional (in)justice. We are incredibly lucky that she agreed to be a part of our Times Six series.

Two of the questions in this series focus on memory, love, misogyny, and blackness. Two of the questions place us at 12 years old, the same age Tamir Rice was when he was gunned down by police in Cleveland Ohio; and the same age Davia Garth was, who was killed by her stepfather in the same city. One of the questions asks us imagine two incredibly needed national policy proposals. The final question ponders how black lives can actually matter in 2015.

Laymon: Tell me about the first time you remember your love for black folks being threatened?

Solomon: My freshman year of college at an HBCU in Tallahassee. I was an up north, Afrocentric snob but didn't realize it. So I was so confused about why these angry Jacksonville girls were trying to beat me up for nothing, and why their boy threw me into the cafeteria conveyor belt. Also, in a time of all baggy everything, I was horrified at how stank some of the girls dressed. I was on my Assata Shakur ready-for-war look, with my jean set and 40 Acres and a Mule cap. Meanwhile, my sisters would be up in the club with their cheek-bottoms hanging out screaming "Pop That Pussy" while some ignorant dudes doused them with drinks.

When you were twelve years old, can you describe for me what a perfect day would look like?

I'm from Philly, a town where hair is important, but I wasn't allowed to process mine until high school. Around age 12—while I was attending a predominantly white, mostly rich, all-girls school—I became obsessed with this matter. I didn't care what the white girls thought, though. I was preoccupied by what two of the 13 black girls at that K-12 school saw when they peeped my struggle bangs. That year I wore a cream knit tam way into spring because I was so ashamed of my naps.

On a perfect day, my hair would have been permed and styled by Hair Image on 52nd Street. I would've met up with a fine, young African-American gentleman who didn't care that I talked kind of white. We would listen to "Harvest for the World" because I was a weird kid who was into that kind of thing. Then I would hop on somebody's stage and belt out "Someday We'll All Be Free." Finally, I would have mac and cheese and cranberry sauce for dinner.

If twelve-year-old you could describe the most exciting thing you did last night, what would she say?

Wow. Back to 12. It's a draw. Watching Falcon Crest or singing in my father's basement studio. If we were doing the Falcon Crest thing, I would comment on how fine Lorenzo Lamas appeared to be. If it was the studio, I would talk about how Ralph from New Edition was an excellent singer.

Can you describe your first memory of misogyny and anti-blackness colliding?

At an old job of mine there was a white guy who would say "nigga" the same way normal members of his kinfolk would say "dude." Once he was talking to this black man at the copy machine and said, "Niggas kill niggas over bitches every day." This was pre-Eminem, when "I wish a white boy would" was still viable, so I thought the person who looked like me would have checked his friend. Instead, they gave each other pounds and began caressing each other's faces with light strokes. OK. They didn't physically caress one another but their bonding over the failings of niggas and bitches was palpable. I laugh about this now, but back then it was a big deal.

If you could concretely propose any two new national policies, what would they be?

I don't have policy chops so I have to keep this vague. One: African-Americans and any other form of black person whose family got here by yesterday would receive reparations. Two: Property taxes should not determine how public schools are funded.

How can black lives really matter in these United States of America?

Is this a trick question? I think it's inherent that black lives matter in this country. If black lives didn't matter, white supremacist institutions wouldn't keep using increasingly boring ways to kill us and explain it away.

But to answer what I think this question is, I would say that when all black people have food, clothing, shelter, education, full employment, leisure time, transportation, wealth, freedom, voting rights, clean air and ironclad protection from nervous law enforcement agents, that would signal that black lives really matter.

[Photo via AP]