Damare Baker January 9, 2026 at 4:00 AM For Patrice Willoughby, the NAACP’s policy and legislative-affairs chief, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. The picture in question? A portrait of her great-great-great-grandmother Jeannette Wilkins, taken before the Emancipation Proclamation, likely around the mid-1850s. It’s a simple photograph of Jeannette in a silk dress and bonnet, her left hand resting on a table to show her wedding ring.