Under the baobab: Thanking the Black women, mothers who lift us up

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day.

My dear mother, Bessie, joined the ancestors over a decade ago. Though she has moved on, her spirit remains.

She lives still in the way I walk and the way I talk. After all, she taught me to walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and potty. Her loving and lessons and yes, her dreams, are manifested every day in the choices I make. I am as I was raised by the women in my family and in the community. I was blessed to know my grandmothers and even my great-grandmother, who was the daughter of a formerly enslaved person. Curtis McKenzie was also one of the 180,000 Black men who served in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War. They made up 3/4 of the replacement troops in the Union Army after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which permitted them to be enlisted. More than any other factor they facilitated the Union victory against the treacherous confederacy.

My dad was not involved in my early upbringing. Later he became my essential connection to our family. Like most adult men he was off fighting the Nazis and fascists, saving the world for democracy. My mom, like most women, was home working in the factories and on the farms building the guns, ships and resources which enabled that fight to be successful.

A teenage mother, she had to quit high school to bring up her son. At various times she worked in a factory, drove a cab, was a server, a singer and a housemaid. She was an election judge for Chicago’s Democratic Party. She taught me to read, write and be an ethical and caring human being. She trained survival skills into her rambunctious young Black son who was growing up in a world diseased by white supremacy. Yet she kept joy in our lives, not permitting the oppressive circumstances of segregation to overwhelm my spirit. The despair of discrimination never crushed my hope. I aspired to be a major league ball player, a poet, an actor, even a nuclear physicist while being chided by outside society. I was declared genetically incapable of accomplishing anything but menial labor.

Like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Mom had her dreams. She nurtured and planted them in me. I perform because she was a performer who never was given a chance. I work for social justice and equality because she did. If I am successful, it is the seed of success she planted, which bloomed into the next generation. I look at other Black mothers who excel, Vice President Harris, Justice Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Tierra Williams, Toni Morrison, Audra MacDonald, Michele Obama, Pam Robb, Leslie Laing, Viola Davis, Charima Young, Grace Hampton, Carline Crevecoeur, Barbara Farmer ... our country and our community blossoms because of the sacrifice and struggles of these Black women.

Blessed by my mother, I am yet thrice blessed by Jo, my beloved wife, partner, best friend, comrade and colleague of over 50 years. Thank you all and Happy Mother’s Day.

Thanks also to the Lions Paw society for honoring me with the Lions Paw Award.

Congratulations to Lorraine Jones, president of the NAACP and Fritz Smith, president of the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau on being awarded a 2022 Journeying Toward Freedom grant, one of only seven in Pennsylvania. It will help commemorate Juneteenth. The second annual Poetry and Politics was held at the 3 Dots last Saturday. Dr. Grace Hampton, Essence of Joy 2 with Dr. Tony Leach and Pastor Paul McReynolds presented the second “Weaving Wisdom- We Shall Overcome, but How?” at Albright-Bethune United Methodist Church last Friday.

I must also regretfully report the passing of our friend and mentor, Larry Young, the first director of the Paul Robeson Center and inspiration of the Larry Young Scholarship.