blue hand with quoteLove these words from Biddy Mason, once a Black slave woman who walked from Mississippi to California working along the way  as a cattle herder and nurse/midwife.

Quite a woman she was.

In 1856 she petitioned the California courts and won her freedom. She reached out with her open hand to immigrants and prisoners. Sixteen years later in 1872, she and her son founded the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in her  Los Angeles home.  That little group grew to nearly 3,000 members.

How’s that for offering an open hand?