From Adversity to Accomplishment
The Annotated Bibliography
My single mother raised me. Despite my maternal rearing, my ancestral research has been geared towards my paternal side of the family. One can only imagine how much conflict this poses for me. Indeed, I only connect with my paternal family on nonconsecutive holidays, and I know very little about them. However, that’s the exact reason why this project is so important for me. I want to discover my paternal family ancestry in an effort to bridge the gap between me and the mysterious, intriguing other half of my bloodline.
In an effort submerge myself in the truth of my family’s roots and routes, I have compiled a bibliography of insightful sources from several disciplines: history, literature, sociology, psychology, feminism, and culinary arts. As Black families throughout Mississippi and the South share similar backgrounds heightened by common themes, I am confident that the pictures that I paint will also be indicative of my maternal ancestral story. I have chosen my historical sources to provide the truths and my literary sources to illustrate those truths. On the other hand, the sociological and psychological sources reveal the source of my ancestor’s strength, motivation, and resilience. Finally, the feminist and culinary sources highlight the talents and significance of the women, as the rocks of an entire race.
Now, come. Join me through this journey of my family’s roots and routes.
Section I: A Historical Perspective
Mitchell, Denis J. A New History of Mississippi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.
The year is 1708. The first ship arrives to the Mississippi Territory. When the ship docks on the coast, the stench can be smelled from smiles away, and the chains clink, as the fragile bodies make an exodus from the ship. Many have died of illness. Others have endured the suffocating aroma of death and feces. Soon, they’ll be cleaned, fed, greased, plucked, and sold. With their first breath of American air, their lives are changed forever.
In A New History of Mississippi, Dennis Mitchell chronicles the rich history of the state of Mississippi. Among the abundance of facts, his historical account includes the story of those that helped to lay the very foundation that American rests on today: African Americans. By 1810, nearly half of the population (46 percent) of the area, that would later become the state of Mississippi, were African Americans. Slaves worked endlessly on the plantations of Mississippi and possessed very little rights or entitlements, as their owners dictated every fiber of their beings. In fact, free blacks in Mississippi were obliged to abide by stringent rules of the state as well, as those in power viewed them as equally inferior. According to Mitchell, “all that differentiated a slave from a free black in the eyes of the law was the free black’s ability to own property,” which leads me directly to ancestors, Hiram and Eliza Cole.
Hiram and Eliza Cole are the oldest known relatives on my paternal side of the family. They were landowners and lived in Neshoba County, Mississippi, a city 185 miles away from where the majority of freedmen lived in Natchez. Based off of Mitchell’s historical account, I know that they were fighters. They managed to persevere in a land hate. While I don’t how they are or what they looked like, I know that slave ancestors were fighters too. They braved the ship. They bore the lash. Somewhere off in the distance, I can see them gazing in to blazing sun, searching for the faces of those who would one day exist comfortably in the land of the free.
Schweninger, Loren. Black Property Owners in the South 1790–1915. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Hiram and Eliza stand in awe. They stand, breathless, gazing at the green. They’ve waited for this moment their entire lives. This land is theirs now. Every inch of it is theirs.
In her book, Black Property Owners in the South 1790–1915, Loren Schweninger astounds her readers by proving that a number of blacks in the Lower and Upper South during the 19th and 20th centuries had overcome pressing racism and oppression and had become proud property owners. Schweninger conveys this truth by providing statistical data and state records and by describing the economical nature of the South during this period and the ambitious efforts of Negroes to put the past behind them and assimilate into American society. In her analysis, Schweninger includes passages about affluent and average free Negroes that managed to purchase homes, farmland, and businesses, especially in the antebellum and post-antebellum years. She pays particular attention to the fact that many Southern whites disliked the idea of Negroes gaining any form of self-sufficiency and worked hard to inhibit their growing economical independence. Although she states that there was a small percentage of Black landowners in the South during this period, her main goal is to shed light on the fact that several free Negroes accomplished the seemingly impossible goal of land ownership, despite their recent, more oppressive past.
Black Property Owners is applicable to my ancestors, my great-great grandparents, Hiram Cole and Eliza Cole. Born in the 1850s, before the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, they were free Negroes in Mississippi, who owned their own farm, as recorded in the United States Census records of 1900. According to Schweninger, at least 426, 449 Blacks in the entire 16 states of the upper and lower South owned land during this period. My great-great grandparents were two of them. Through this book, I’m able to get a sense of what it was like to live and make a living in the South just decades after the “abolition” of slavery. Because of the oppressive nature of the period, my great-great grandparents’ accomplishment reveals just the kind of people that they were. They were ambitious.They were determined. They were unafraid. Their efforts helped to pave the way for the future black property owners that would surface just months and decades later, including other members of my family.
Lepore, Jill. “The Uprooted.” New Yorker (New York, NY), Sept. 6, 2010.
It’s a lonely dark night in Mississippi when the knock is heard. Two white men stand at the door looking for Joe Lee. Hours later, Lee is stained in sticky, red blood and bruised by the arch of chains. George, Joe Lee’s cousin, greases Lee to loosen his clothes from his blood-stained skin and rushes back home to his wife. “This the last crop we making.” Days later, George and Ida are aboard the Mobile and Ohio Railroad with only their children, the quilts, a Bible, and a box of fried chicken. They’re headed to the North.
Journalist, Jill Leflore, briefly chronicles the nature of and the motivation behind The Great Migration, the movement of Blacks from the South to the North from 1916 to 1970. According to Leflore, more than half of the Blacks that were living in the South had left by the end of the migration. Why did they leave? They left in hopes to escape the evils of Jim Crow in the South in favor of the allure of the distant North. To illustrate this remarkable event, Leflore briefly tells the story of migrant Ida Mae Brandon from Isabel Wilkerson’s award winning novel, The Warmth of Others Suns, which includes the compelling stories of three black individuals who left the South for the North in hopes of a better life.
I can see them now, boarding the train to California. My relatives, Emma Cole Jernigan, John Homer Cole, Monroe Cole, and Mary Ann Cole Robinson, migrated. They left Mississippi in the 1950s and 1970s, seeking the warmth of other suns. They were brave individuals, who were fed up with the heinous nature of the South and the stories about Emmitt Till or Medgar Evers. They wanted a fresh start, so they went after it.
“I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns, and, perhaps, to bloom.” -Richard Wright, Black Boy
Section II: A Literary Perspective
Taylor, Mildred. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. New York: Penguin Group, 2002.
Grandma Logan, also known as Big Ma, gazes nostalgically at the trees within the thick woods near the fields and forms her lips to tell her granddaughter, Cassie Logan, a story. She explains that Paul Edward Logan, her proud, brave husband, purchased the 400 acres of expansive farmland that the family currently resides on from a white family, the Grangers. The Granger family had to sell the land during Reconstruction to make ends meet. Now, old man Granger, the richest man in the county, wants his land back. Big Ma wouldn’t dare. The land is theirs. They’d sacrificed everything they had to grasp it, and they would never let it go.
In her novel, Mildred D. Taylor, a native Mississippian born during the Jim Crow Era, writes a compelling story about a Black family in Mississippi that manages to own their own land and overcome the vicious racism of the Jim Crow South and the stunting reality of the Great Depression. She begins at Great Faith Elementary and Secondary School, where the prideful Cassie Logan begins her fourth grade year of school. Cassie, the main character, astounds her teacher when refuses to use the old, insufficient books trashed by white schools and detests the use of the word Negras in the books by white teachers referring to the books’ new Black recipients. Subsequently, Taylor proceeds throughout the book to illustrate the struggles of the Logan family and their community to transcend racial and economical barriers in a state, where the state flag, marked with the Confederate emblem, still flies high overhead today. Taylor concludes with thunder rolling, fire catching, and tears dripping…
The darkness is punctured by the rolls of thunder, the flashes of lightning, and the headlights of night men riding. The men are coming to get TJ, coming to get revenge, coming to plant more strange fruit in the trees. Suddenly, the cotton is ablaze, and the men drop their guns and ropes to go quench it. Later, after the tension dilutes, Taylor reveals that the Papa Logan had been responsible. He desperately needed to inhibit the risk of dying, the risk of uprooting his family, and the risk of losing the family’s cherished land. Through Mildred Taylor’s eyes, I envision my great grandparents, Mary Frances and Robert Cole, risking everything they had for what they cherished the most: their children, their freedom, and their land. I see them cultivating the Mississippi soil, as former sharecroppers; maintaining their property, as homeowners; raising my grandmother, Willie Ruth, and her siblings, as parents; and standing firm against racism, as fervent Black Mississippians of the early 20th century.
Moody, Anne. Coming Of Age In Mississippi. New York: The Dial Press, Inc., 1968.
Essie Mae Moody trembles, as she walks hesitantly towards the home of Ms. Burkes, where she works as a maid. Her mom’s advice to, “just do your work like you don’t know nothing,” echoes in her mind. Despite her mom’s precautions, there’s a single thing that lingers in her mind: the recent death of Emmett Till in Money, MS, a city situated just 210 miles away from her home and just 100 miles away from where my relatives were living at the time in Louisville, MS. Her single mother, Tootsweet, having worked several inferior jobs all her life to support her family, warns Annie not to mention the tragedy to her racist employer. Tootsweet’s fear immediately transfers to Annie, who wonders if she can escape the “Evil Spirit” that orchestrated the conclusion to Emmett Till’s young life.
Functioning as her autobiography, Coming of Age chronicles the life of Anne Moody (born Essie Mae Moody), an African American woman growing up in Mississippi from childhood to early adulthood. The complacency of fearful Blacks, the struggles of Black family life and the harshness of race relations in the South are at the heart of Moody’s story. Throughout her childhood, Moody has to deal with adversities, such as learning how to watch after her one year old sister at the age of four and learning to survive off of beans and bread due her mom’s low income. Once she enters high school, Moody discovers racism and the NAACP through what her teacher secretly tells her and begins to develop resentment towards the institution of racism and the blacks that allow it. As a young college student living away from her mother, Moody strives to get a college education with limited funds and subsequently enters the civil rights movement, getting involved with organizations like the NAACP. Despite her role in working against racism, her life experiences created an uncertainty within her of whether or not the movement would ever succeed.
I can imagine the lives of my closest relatives and distant ancestors within the print on the pages of Moody’s story. I see my great Aunt Bessie Cole, striving against the financial burden of the time to obtain a college education.
I can see earlier relatives slaving in the fields, as share croppers, and over the stoves, as maids, to make just enough to get by. I can see my mom living in Jackson during the movement and going to school, for the first time in her life, alongside her white neighbors. I can sense the inclination to overcome the inflictions of racism and threats of demise. I can see the fear in their eyes of those who could smell the stench of strange fruit in the trees. I can feel the determination to arrange a means of survival and escape for the loved ones they held close and the ones lingering in the future as ghosts.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. New York: Harper Brothers Publishers, 1945.
Grr! Grr! Little Richard’s tummy rumbles, as he makes his way to his mother to inquire about their next meal. He is hungry, but there is no food. Ever since his dad stormed out of their lives, there has been little sustenance. He, his mom, and his little brother endure the piercing pangs of emptiness in both the stomach and the heart. Once his mom reaches her breaking point and is shackled by illness, Richard must step up to the plate and become man prematurely in an effort to survive.
“Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside…” -Richard Wright, Black Boy
When the curtain parts in his autobiography, Black Boy, Richard Wright tells the story of his turbulent childhood growing up in Mississippi. He and his family must elude the blows dealt by poverty, helplessness and racism and learn to survive. Once his mother loses her ability to take of her children, Wright moves from city to city and relative and relative and eventually enters the workforce. As a working man, Richard must endure racism, even in Chicago. While in Chicago, he seeks refuge within the Communist Party due to its apparent commitment to uplift the common man. However, he is soon shattered with disappointment when he realizes that even the Communist Party could be corrupt and oppressive. Despite the disheartening, precarious nature of his life, Richard Wright remains rooted in his passion for reading and writing and focuses on making his writing the gateway between himself and the world.
“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books…” -Richard Wright, Black Boy
Crunch! Crunch! Little Miss Bessie Cole steps on the crispy leaves of light browns, oranges, and yellows. It is not yet dawn, as she begins her trek of many miles to the schoolhouse. She would see many more dawns and endure many more journeys until she’d done what no one else in her family immediate family had done: obtain a college education. Little Miss Bessie Cole was my great Aunt. Like Richard Wright, she obtained her goals, despite the world of “nos” that tried to inhibit her. As they stared adversity in the face, Richard Wright and my Great Aunt Bessie Cole challenged the paradigms of the time.
“I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.” -Richard Wright, Black Boy
Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. Directed Tate Taylor. 2009. Universal City: DreamWorks Studios, 2011. DVD.
Ms. Aibileen tip-toes though the hall, grinning from cheek to cheek. Her excitement is written all over her face, as she hears her bosses’ daughter, little Mae Mobley, calling out for her. “Aibi, Aibi,” chimes little Mae. Once Miss Aibileen enters the toddler’s room, her mouth is agape in entusiasim, and she trots over to the crib, lifts the healthy child out, places her on her lap, and sits in the rocking chair. She gazes into Mae’s twinkling hazel eyes. “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” Miss Aibileen, a middle-aged Black who had raised 17 white children in her lifetime, and women like her in her community often go unrecognized. That was until a humble white aspiring journalist comes along and decides to listen.
The decade is the 60s. The setting is Jackson, the capital and heart of Mississippi, a divided state struggling with the turbulence of the civil rights movement and the acceptance of a newer time on the horizon. The storyline of the film, The Help, presents the lives of several Black maids that work in the homes of busy, weak-minded, flamboyant white women in an effort to make enough money to provide for their families. The maids, Minnie and Aibileen, and a white sympathizer,Miss Skeeter, who had been raised by a maid herself, collaborate together against the laws of the state to bring pitch to silenced voices. Miss Skeeter’s main goal is to enhance her budding career as a journalist and remain true to herself, her childhood, and her beliefs by interviewing Aibileen and Minnie for her “Miss Myrna” column and by publishing a risky, raw story of the responsibilities and struggles of the Black maids living, working and surviving in Jackson. All three women continue to press on, live their lives, and tell their stories, despite the racist people, like Ms. Hilly, and the difficult circumstances that stand in their way.
“We living in Hell. Trapped.” -Aibileen
The detail of this movie that captivates me the most is its hypothetical and actual setting in my birthplace of Jackson, Mississippi. I still remember the two minute drive from our old drive way in Jackson to the blood-stained driveway of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers’ home and the historical site of his assassination, an event that brought fear into the hearts of Black men and women in the book and in real life. I remember Capital Street, a well-known location to Blacks in Jackson, as it is situated in the heart of one of the city’s ghettoes. I remember my mom’s stories about the one bedroom “shot gun” apartment, similar those shown next to Ms. Abileen’s home in the film, that my mom, her parents, and four of her five siblings lived in. I’m sure that relatives in Jackson, the Delta and Winston, Kemper, and Neshoba counties rose early in the morning to start their day’s journey in the homes of white families to raise their children, cook their meals, clean their homes, and dismiss their narrow-minded, prejudiced viewpoints and behaviors.
Section III: The Interdisciplinary Perspective
Hill, Robert B. The Strengths of Black Families. New York: Emerson Hall Publishers, Inc., 1972.
A young Black single mom, named Felicia, arrives home late from her custodial job. She’s exhausted, but she must cook a meal for her six children. Their fathers aren’t around to support her, and she seems to only make it by with the food stamps that she anxiously accepts from the state. She does very little to encourage her children, so her oldest son has dropped out and fallen victim to the judicial system. Felicia’s familial unit is just another example of an unstable Black family.
The latter description is inflated with stereotypes, stereotypes that Robert Hill might argue that several scholars have bolstered in their works. According to Robert Hill, sociologist and former researcher or the National Urban League, the research of a large number of urbanologists and sociologists only discusses the negative aspects of the Black family, while omitting their positive facets and survival techniques. As a result, Hill takes on the task of debunking and correcting the myths and misconceptions that suggest that black families are “pathological,” a falsehood often argued to be true without valid evidence and sound reasoning. Hill’s sole purpose is to outline, define, and prove the strengths of black families through 5 underlying themes: strong kinship bonds, strong work orientation, adaptability of family roles, strong achievement orientation, and religious orientation. Through his analysis, Hill reveals that Blacks have strong kinship bonds through extended family relationships, as revealed by the common practice “taking in” other family members and adopting the children of other families due to the lack of fair, adequate placement by state adoption agencies. He also proves Herbert Otto’s statement that Black families possess “the ability for self-help and the ability to accept help when appropriate.” He asserts that Black families aren’t necessarily matriarchal, as state records reveal that Black males assume a responsibility as sole providers with the help of their wives’ smaller but helpful contributions. He proceeds to state that a large amount of independent Black mothers aren’t dependent, most families aren’t deserted, and Black college students tend to go on to succeed in school, despite the lack of adequate education in many of their older family members.
While reading through Hill’s analysis, I look once again towards the lives of my great grandparents, Robert and Mary Frances Cole, and their children. They were a married couple that worked together to raise their children and make decisions, such as the empowering collective decision to purchase a modern brick home in the 1930s. Due to the number of young children in their home and their financial “stability,” they were probably likely to “take in” the young of other relatives and friends, as the presence of names other than their childrens’ can be found in census records. In addition, both Robert and Mary Frances lacked the ability to read and write, but their oldest daughter, Bessie Willie, managed to obtain a college degree, despite the financial and social tension of the time. Indeed, the Cole family had strength beyond measure.
Hill’s research doesn’t include more modern characterizations of the evolving Black family. Well, let’s see how Hill’s illustrates the Black family nearly three decades later and just two years after I was born…
Hill, Robert B. The Strengths Of African American Families: Twenty-Five Years Later. New York: University Press of America, Inc., 1999.
It’s Monday night in the middle of February. Once again, Felicia returns home weak and worn. The department store, where she has been employed for the past 5 years has decided to relocate to a more affluent, suburban area. The store has laid her off, forcing her to imagine how cold her children will be tonight once the gas company shuts off their heat within the next few hours. Meanwhile, two liquor stores and a gun shop have been built on her block with sparkling spirits, bright lights and seductive signage beckoning her son, who has reached his highest level of vulnerability. Survival may seem impossible; but with the help of a few family members, the church, and others in the community, she will pull through.
In Strengths of African American Families, Hill provides a more modern viewpoint of the struggles and strengths of Black families, mainly by reiterating their five strengths (strong achievement orientation, strong work orientation, flexible family roles, strong kinship bonds, and strong religious orientation), and presenting solutions to the causes of their dysfunctions. According to Hill, Blacks’ strong academic orientation, as a means of achieving high social mobility, can be attributed to factors such as the following: high parental and youth aspirations, strong racial identity, and the role of black colleges. In addition, he indicates that most Blacks are willing to work, despite unemployment and other deterrents, as “blacks adults prefer work over welfare.” Flexible family roles and extended families are also a major source of strength, as single mothers may rear their sons and related and nonrelated individuals may work together to support the family. Hill proves that religious life is integral to Black resilience, as churches often provide supportive resources (e.g. soup kitchens, homeless shelters, tutoring, etc.), and youth with strong religious backgrounds are “more likely to achieve upward mobility and engage in positive activities.” Lastly, Hill proposes remedies to Black family dysfunction, such as providing additional funds to historically black colleges, expanding low income housing, and expanding subsidized jobs.
Several of the Hill’s assertions shine a mirror on my life and what I’ve experienced. As a child, I was submerged in church life; and as a result, I participated in a significant amount of positive, constructive activities, such as the dance ministry and Girl Scouts of America. Likewise, as Hill would’ve predicted, my church provided support to disadvantage families in our community, as it established a homeless shelter in the heart of Jackson. Additionally, my mom is a single parent and her strength is evident, as she raised my older and taught him how to play a male’s role. As Hill also points out in his book, many of the key resilience strategies that Black families employ stem directly from our African roots. Indeed, it is clear that my African ancestors passed down their strength through traditions, and I am the product of their resilience.
Parham, Thomas A., Ajamu, Adisa, and White, Joseph L. The Psychology of Blacks. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2011.
“Personality, consciousness and the core identity of Black people is African in nature.” According to the authors of The Psychology of Blacks, Blacks have a connection to their African roots, which helps them to understand who they are, where they’ve come from, and how they can maintain survival and resilience. To start, the scholars of this analysis define the African American worldview, in comparison to the Euro-American worldview, stating that African Americans tend to prefer open expression instead of suppressed expression, contributions to the well-being of the group instead of the well-being of self, oral tradition instead of written record, focus on the present in reflection of the past instead of focus on the future, harmony and balance instead of control and manipulation, acceptance of the spiritual importance of death instead of the avoidance of the reality of death, and unselfishness instead of materialism. Spirituality is also important to African Americans, because it helps to develop a sense of purpose, affirms the ability to be healed and overcome adversity, and establishes a sense of identity and morality. In addition, Parham, Ajamu, and White assert that African Americans develop “spiritual, cognitive, affective and even behavioral spaces from which to pull on the reservoir of energy used to help them to cope with life’s circumstances, “called “Black Strivings.” “Black Strivings” are coping strategies that are derived from African psychological and cultural traditions and include the following: listening to blues and gospel songs to help keep faith and hope alive, employing humor to avoid crying, and creating poetry to express opinions, thoughts, and outrage.
I believe that identity and ambition were important to my ancestors. Through oral tradition, I’m sure that my ancestors were told all the things that their predecessors had to endure to survive and achieve progress. This knowledge, for example, may have motivated the landowners in my family to obtain and maintain land, because they understood that land ownership was a blessing and important opportunity that the individuals before them didn’t have. I imagine that they decided to persevere by remaining true to themselves, maintaining a relationship with God and doing whatever it took survive in hope of a better tomorrow. I also know that my ancestors had to acquire a method of resistance towards things that threatened their existence and well-being, such as whites attempting to usurp their lands. Today, family gatherings often involve soulful music, storytelling, and humor in an effort to take a break from the tribulations of life and reestablish the feeling of happiness and hope. Overall, African traditions and thought processes were passed down and used to facilitate survival, resilience, and identity.
Hughes, Marvalene H. “Soul, Black Women, and Food,” in Food and Culture 1997, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (New York: Routledge, 1997), 272–280.
In her essay, “Soul, Black Women, and Food,” Hughes chimes that “soul food is an expression of the central core of Black culture.” She supports this assertion by providing examples of African American rituals that involve food and by describing how vital cuisine is to the very existence of African Americans, economically, historically, politically, culturally, economically, socially, and spiritually. She begins her analysis by describing the integral role of Black mothers, as creative cooks and pious preservers of African traditions and roots. For example, she goes further to explain that our African ancestors brought the seeds of certain plants to America in effort to preserve their culture and maintain their identity through food, which explains the heavy presence of watermelons, okra, black-eyed peas and other soulful dishes in the Black diet. She reveals that thickness and plumpness, resulting from excessive food consumption, are both praised as symbols of health, prosperity, and beauty and despised as predictors of stress, hypertension, and death.
Hughes candidly expresses the historical aspect of Black culinary rituals, as survival-oriented Black mothers, slaves, and cooks had to employ their creative skills to transform Master’s “leftovers” into “special treats” (e.g. pigs feet, ham hocks, chitterlings, and cracklings). In addition, Hughes is sure to include the ties between religion and food. All communal gatherings and celebrations involve soul food, and the “Black preacher is the first to choose his food.” As a black female, I identify which the majority of Hughes’ assertions. For every family gathering that I’ve ever been a part of, soul food is required and desired. As an African American family, soul food is embedded into our lives, and it’s part of who we are. It is the ultimate symbol of us a people.
Washington, Kerry, Sojourner Truth. Ain’t I A Woman. Video, 2:58. http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/womens-history-month/videos/aint-i-a-woman
The year is 1851. Feminist Sojourner Truth boldly and brilliantly takes a stand at a feminist gathering in Akron, Ohio. More than one hundred years, actress Kerry Washington takes the stage and channels her inner Sojourner Truth to take the audience to that meeting in Ohio, as she illustrates the former slave’s burning sentiments about the legitimacy and significance of the Black woman. Through Washington, Truth begins with a comment that she heard one say: “Women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best everywhere.” In contradiction, she chuckles, “Nobody helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best places. And ain’t I a woman?” Truths message, you see, is that Black women are extremely independent and are just as strong and powerful as men, if not more powerful and stronger. Indeed, she exhorts that women are forces to be reckoned with and will not be silent or overlooked.
One may point to prominent women in history and in the present, such as Michelle Obama or Rosa Parks, as strong, independent Black women. I agree that each of those women is the epitome of the Black woman, but I know a few Black women tucked away in Mississippi that have earned the title as well. What about my paternal grandmother, my maternal grandmother, or even my very own mother? My great grandmother, Mary Frances Cole, is listed as the head of house in the census of 1940, so I’m sure that she “held it down” in her husband’s absence for the nine other residents in their household. My grandmother, Serenia McGee, reared her 6 children by herself after the death of her husband in 1996 to cancer. My single mother and domestic violence survivor, Alice Walker, managed to provide exceedingly and abundantly for my older siblings and myself. Finally, I can’t forget the brave ancestor that endured the sting of the whip on her bare back or the stench of the crowded ship in her nostrils.
“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, well, these women here together oughta be able to turn it back and get it right side up again. And they askin’ to do it! The men betta let ‘em.” -Sojourner Truth
