Strong Black Mothers , Loving Black Families

Today, the daddy is feeling good. He’s thinking about Troy Davis, a black male prisoner who was supposed to be executed by the racist Parole Board in Georgia on Tuesday but was saved (at least for a few days) by the U. S. Supreme Court. He’s thinking about of a surprised but happy Troy Davis in a photo with his family. This got the daddy to thinking of his own family: about how poor it was in a financial sense but how rich it was it was in a spiritual sense. This is because, despite the hard times, despite the occasional hunger, the daddy’s family, like so many black families in his community, was filled with love. The daddy knows that his mother and the mothers of his community were chiefly responsible for this love, but his father and the fathers had a lot to do with it too. So the daddy looked for some essay, poem, or short story that depicts this love in his and other flack families. He came with two poems, one by Nikki Giovanni and the other by Langston Hughes. Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943) is an internationally known poet and long-time social activist. Her books about the civil rights movement in the sixties are militant and insightful. Her most recent books are personal and reflective. Her most recent book of poetry is entitled “Acolytes.” The poem she wrote that most connects to my memories of a happy family filled with love is called “Nikki-Rosa.

Nikki-Rosa
by Nikki Giovanni

Childhood remembrances are
always a drag if you're Black
you always remember things like
living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something

They never talk about how happy
you were to have your mother
all to yourself and how good the
water felt when you got your bath
from one of those

Big tubs that folk in chicago barbeque
in and somehow when you talk
about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings as the
whole family attended meetings

About Hollydale and even though you
remember your biographers never
understand your father's pain as he
sells his stock and another
dream goes

And though your're poor it isn't
poverty that concerns you and
though they fought a lot
it isn't your father's drinking that
makes any difference but only that

Everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays
and very good Christmasses and I
really hope no white person ever has
cause to write about me
because they never understand

Black love is Black wealth and they'll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy

Langston Hughes (1901) is associated with the Harlem Renaissance, but he was a prolific writer, and his work span generations and world wars and even the civil rights and black power movement of the sixties. Though he wrote novels, dramas and columns for black newspapers, he is best known for his poetry. The poem he wrote that reminds the daddy of his happy childhood and loving family was entitled “The Negro Mother.” It reminds him of the centrality and spiritually of his mother that kept his large but loving family together:

The Negro Mother
by Langston Hughes

Children, I come back today
To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
Look at my face -- dark as the night --
Yet shining like the sun with love's true light.
I am the dark girl who crossed the red sea
Carrying in my body the seed of the free.
I am the woman who worked in the field
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield.
I am the one who labored as a slave,
Beaten and mistreated for the work that I gave --
Children sold away from me, I'm husband sold, too.
No safety , no love, no respect was I due.

Three hundred years in the deepest South:
But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth .
God put a dream like steel in my soul.
Now, through my children, I'm reaching the goal.

Now, through my children, young and free,
I realized the blessing deed to me.
I couldn't read then. I couldn't write.
I had nothing, back there in the night.
Sometimes, the valley was filled with tears,
But I kept trudging on through the lonely years.
Sometimes, the road was hot with the sun,
But I had to keep on till my work was done:
I had to keep on! No stopping for me --
I was the seed of the coming Free.
I nourished the dream that nothing could smother
Deep in my breast -- the Negro mother.
I had only hope then , but now through you,
Dark ones of today, my dreams must come true:
All you dark children in the world out there,
Remember my sweat, my pain, my despair.
Remember my years, heavy with sorrow --
And make of those years a torch for tomorrow.
Make of my pass a road to the light
Out of the darkness, the ignorance, the night.
Lift high my banner out of the dust.
Stand like free men supporting my trust.
Believe in the right, let none push you back.
Remember the whip and the slaver's track.
Remember how the strong in struggle and strife
Still bar you the way, and deny you life --
But march ever forward, breaking down bars.
Look ever upward at the sun and the stars.
Oh, my dark children, may my dreams and my prayers
Impel you forever up the great stairs --
For I will be with you till no white brother
Dares keep down the children of the Negro Mother.