..I am a Black woman. I know and believe to my core that there is power in that fact. I move through this life as the mother of four grown, very interesting children whom I not only love, but also find that I do like a great deal. I am also a grandmother with all of its maternal implications. I have lived and continue to live a full and interesting life as an entrepreneur, as well as a grassroots peace and environmental activist. My life has held its ups and downs, its joys and disappointments, its gains and losses.
Although my mother was alive for only eleven years of my life, I am confident that I know how to be a good woman, a good mother, and a good friend because of what I learned from her, watching her, listening to her, being around her. She carried beauty and grace with her, internally and externally. People still speak fondly of her scores of years after her passing. I owe my will and ability to survive as a grown woman to my paternal grandmother who helped my Dad raise us after my Mom passed. I owe the broadness of my interests, the depths of my intellect and the early development of my character to my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles as the people who raised, taught, protected, nurtured and cared for me.
I cannot express how much of a blessing that it was for me to have grown up when, (the 50s and 60s), and where, (Lexington Park, Maryland & Washington, D.C.), I did. My parents and their friends were so cool and so smart. They could dance, they could dress, they could stick together to build a strong community. As a very little child, running through the house on my way outside, I’d hear things like, ‘Have you heard that Cat from New York that’s in the House?’ or ‘That Cat from New York is really putting it to them.’ Of course that Cat from New York was Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. I knew who Nehru was before the jacket was popular. I heard them talking about the United Nations, I knew about what Ralph Bunch was doing, I knew where the Suez Canal was. I have always known that there were Black people all over the world doing great things, moving civilization forward. This is all before third grade. I knew that Alexandre Dumas was a black man when I was reading The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Three Musketeers as a child. They didn’t brow beat us with this, they just gave us access to knowledge and information informally as well as formally by making sure we had what were probably the best group of teachers and school administrators in the universe in our all Black elementary, Jr. and high schools. We gleaned things in passing through osmosis it seemed, but our teachers, from 1st grade on, were no joke. Until seventh grade, all of my teachers were Black or Native American. In retrospect it seems like they wanted us to know every single thing that they knew before we left their class. It was as if they took pride in our intellect being a direct reflection of their teaching ability and their capacity to impart all of the knowledge of our ancestors on to us.
We got to run and rip outside, on the playground, on the ball field, in the middle of the street and in the woods. We were safe and had that freedom to explore outside and experiment with nature, because our parents and families and community made it safe. We got stung by bees, got poison ivy, crashed our bikes and skinned every limb, fell out of trees, wrapped swings around the poles, stepped on nails all the way through our Keds, Converse Chuck Taylor's and Bob Cousey’s (I may not be spelling his name correctly but if you wore them, you know what I’m talking about), and we lived to tell about it the next day. I also had the freedom to explore inside with books, newspapers, and magazines that my parents had available around the house for us to read. As children the adults talked to us, they engaged in conversation with us. My father and my uncle told spooky stories. They showed so much imagination, and in doing so sort of gave permission for us to explore our own imaginations.
I am an advocate for my people, for my community, for my constitution and for my rights because of them. I will be a student for the rest of my life because of them. I will always be a citizen of the world because of them. I am an entrepreneur and believe that I can build an empire because of them. I know how to love and feel compassion and empathy because of them. I know how to survive because of them. I have hope because of them.
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