It’s the eve of Election Day 2024, and this swing state has had its fill of campaign promises and hateful accusations, but UNC Greensboro student Kendall Garraway encourages voters to exercise their rights and remember their role in history.
“When it feels like oppressive forces are beating down on you and you have no choice but to give in, I look at history and I realized in every single aspect, the people have always won. I draw hope from history,” Garraway says.
Garraway has spent the last year serving internships at non-profits that encourage voter registration as she finishes a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal and Interdisciplinary Studies with a minor in political science, a dream made possible thanks to UNC Greensboro’s distance learning program.
Her journey, punctuated with tragedy and good fortune, makes you believe in the American dream and the power of education, despite a system that may seem flawed.
Education as a Way Out
Garraway’s formative years were spent in New York where her parents struggled to hold steady jobs and care for the family. “My parents didn’t graduate high school but instilled a love of education in me that took me farther,” she says.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy displaced the family. Garraway lived with her mother in hotels and shelters funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Garraway found solace from her circumstances in libraries and books.
“In New York, you see homeless people on the streets and in subways, and you realize that no matter how desperate your life seems, it can always be worse,” she explains.
Unfortunately for Garraway, it did get worse. As she was finishing middle school, Garraway’s mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She sent her to live with her older brother in Fayetteville, North Carolina, while she underwent treatment.
“We were all just surviving as a family unit, so I threw myself into my schoolwork,” she explains. “It was the only solution I saw to my problems. I saw education as my way out.”
Advanced placement courses and classroom debates about the 2016 election contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton sparked Garraway’s love of history and politics. “As a black girl in a majority white school with a strong military influence, I couldn’t just tell them they were wrong. I had to have facts to back up my opinions.”
World history classes opened her mind to oppressive forces in different eras and cultures and their similarities to present-day societal struggles.
“I had never made the connection that things existing before me were directly influencing what was around me right now,” she says. “I still believe that answers to issues of the present are found in the past.”
Advice as you head to the polls:
A vote in a country as historically influential as ours is a powerful thing. Vote with empathy, and vote with integrity.
– Kendall Garraway
The World’s a Classroom
Since finances were tight and family support was limited, college felt like a fantasy for Garraway: “I dreamed of living in a dorm and spending hours studying in a library where I didn’t have to worry about anything but school and educating myself.”
Deciding that UNCG’s values aligned with her dreams, she saved earnings from a part-time job to pay the application fees. Although she remembers her sheer happiness in being accepted, she couldn’t cover tuition and had to defer.
But in a strike of luck, Garraway’s aunt and uncle, who were living in Singapore, invited her to spend the first “semester” of her gap year in Asia with them. They were professionals without children who wanted to broaden her mind with new experiences. Garraway studied Mandarin, developed independence through travel and sightseeing, and celebrated her eighteenth birthday in Bali!
“When I think back on it, I realize it was a luxury that I never would have fathomed for myself,” she says. “I had never been on a plane before I went to Asia. They wanted to get me out of that ‘survival’ mindset and think about what I wanted to do with my life.”
Garraway returned home in early 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic looming and her mother suffering through her last days. “I basically felt like I came back from a dream and was hit with a harsh reality.” She moved in with her uncle, who was an educator in Winston-Salem. He encouraged her to refocus on UNCG, apply for scholarships, and investigate the distance learning program.
A Spartan at Last
A year later, Garraway was back in New York, reconnecting with her father and attending UNCG as a full-time online student. Advisors like Joyce Clapp reassured her that distance learning would work for her. She found classes that engaged her like Comparative Politics, Understanding Race, and Queer Theory.
“I Face Timed with professors and dove into email threads giving me nuanced critiques of my writing,” she remembers. “These professors were pouring into me. Their praise and feedback built my character and built my way of thinking.”
“UNCG’s online program was a
life saver during the pandemic.
It allowed me to afford UNCG and
finally made college possible for me.”
– Kendall Garraway
Garraway even took advantage of campus resources like Career & Professional Development. As she approached her third year, she used Handshake to search for internships and interviewed for a summer job at Democracy NC, a non-partisan organization focused on registering voters.
“I was hired as a communications intern and was finally able to focus on my passion for informing marginalized groups. I saved up earnings from a part-time job at McDonald’s to cover airfare and living expenses for a summer in North Carolina.”
As Garraway continued her online studies in 2023, she also accepted an internship at a think tank in Manhattan, The Brennan Center for Justice, before coming back to North Carolina for a second year at Democracy NC.
So, in the year leading up to the 2024 election, Garraway is completing her online degree at UNCG and working for non-profits that encourage voter registration. She’s had hands-on experience in communications and policy research, written an op-ed that was published in the Raleigh News and Observer, and brainstormed with staffers at all levels about creative ways to get more people to the polls.
Garraway loves working with non-profits, where she can focus her efforts on what people need “so we can have a more representative government with equitable policies.” However, she is still intrigued by how the past informs the present. With only seventeen credits left before she graduates with honors, she’s contemplating law school, teaching at the collegiate level, and taking on more non-profit positions.
“I will always look for answers in the past,” she says. “I would not be where I am or who I am or the way I am without a history that has made it so. I just hope I can change history for someone like me that will exist in 100 years and make it easier for them to carry the baton.”
Story by Becky Deakins, University Communications.
Photos by David Lee Row, University Communications (unless otherwise noted).
Solve today’s problems with knowledge of our history.
