Dr. Huel Perkins was my Humanities professor in my junior year of college. He was also one of the most captivating human beings I had ever met. He was tall, six feet four inches, to be exact.
His caramel brown complexion was blemish free. The sprinkles of gray throughout his perfectly kept short afro whispered wisdom. But it was his infectious laugh that was most memorable. He was filled with joy.
A Question About Purpose
During one of our conversations I asked him why he always seemed to show up for class overflowing with joy, passion, and purpose. I will never forget his response. He said, “Every day I get to touch eternity.”
He went on to explain how he could never know where his students would end up or how they might ultimately impact the world. And he could certainly never know whose lives his students might impact in the future.
For Huel Perkins, life was not measured solely by the years he lived or the classes he taught. He was focused on the imprints on the lives of his students and the world around him. These were not fleeting moments of vanity or ambition. These were lasting impressions that carried forward the power to shape the lives of those he would never meet.
“Every day I get to touch eternity.”
After all these years, I have never forgotten those words. They connected with something deep within me. As I’ve aged, they inform almost everything I do.
The Weight of the Question
As a soon to be seventy year old Black man in America, every day I ask myself, what contribution can I make that will have meaning far beyond my days here? How can I leave my fingerprints in a society that seems intent on erasing me?
In my book, Aging While Black: A Radical Reimagining of Aging and Race in America, I explore what it means for Black elders to leave such fingerprints in a society that has, for centuries, sought to erase them.
Our history reveals a sobering truth: the story of Black aging has been written within systems designed to diminish both our humanity and our legacy. Yet, our history also reveals that despite these conditions, we have been builders, achievers, and visionaries.
The Fingerprints Already Left
I am mindful of Mrs. Roach, the midwife who lived a few houses from my childhood home. She ushered life into the world when hospitals would not admit the Black women in my community.
I reflect on the journey of my now ninety-two-year-old mother. As a young teacher she had to travel to a neighboring state to pursue her passion because the separate and unequal system of the time would not allow her to do so where she lived.
My uncle, Gus Young, marched knowing he might not live to see the change he was fighting for. These are but a few of the many examples of the reality that our elders have always understood that they were shaping a future beyond their own. They each possessed what I described in the book as a “resolute optimism”.
Their fingerprints remain in the things they created, the movements they sparked, the families they nurtured, and the cultural memory they preserved.
The Urgency of Now
But this inheritance is not stationary. We live in a world where the speed of change does significant damage to the connection between generations.
Digital platforms move faster than oral traditions. There seems to be a daily attack against the hard earned gains of our elders. And systemic inequities in healthcare, housing, and opportunity only compound with age.
A Radical Reimagining
Against this backdrop, the call to leave fingerprints on eternity takes on new urgency. If the marks we leave are to endure, they must be made with intention, clarity, and courage.
This is the essence of the radical reimagining I write about in Aging While Black. It is not enough to survive aging in America; now is the time to claim it as a stage of leadership, cultural stewardship, and purposeful impact.
Ultimately, the question is not whether we will leave a mark, but what kind of mark it will be. In this season of my life, I have no desire to simply be remembered. I want to be useful. I want to live in such a way that when my time is done, I have not left just impressions of my presence, but evidence of my purpose. And I want the same for every Black elder whose story is too often left untold.
This is the work of Aging While Black.
Eternity is shaped, not in grand gestures alone, but in the steady press of lives lived with purpose. Our fingerprints are already there. The question is: what will they say about us?
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Join Raymond in Santa Fe this spring to sit with these questions together – about the eternities we touch, the fingerprints we leave, and what it means to live a life that ripples forward.
Aging While Black: Leaving Fingerprints on Eternity
March 19-22, 2026 | Santa Fe, NM