“Go back to being a (expletive) slave, you (N-word)," the essay began.
Niko Goodrum, the Detroit Tigers' super-utility man, was a passenger in a car on Monday morning, while reading the essay on the way to an event that celebrated Jackie Robinson Day.
Goodrum read the first line and was stunned.
Gabrielle Porter, an eighth-grader at West Hills Middle School in Bloomfield Hills, wrote the essay after she was insulted verbally in 2018. Porter could have responded with violence. But she used the insult as inspiration and motivation.
Then she wrote a raw, profound, powerful essay about her experience.