Legacy Of Strength
Before I enter a room, my first thoughts are; know your worth, hold your head up, shoulders back, make eye contact, give a firm handshake and speak clearly with confidence. Either, inadvertently or intentionally, I’ve been imbued to embody great confidence and strength. There’s always been an expectation for me to convey this caliber of strength as though it were my own, but it was never mine. I’ve learned to embrace it, cherish it, honor it, and do my best to steward it well. This strength has been cultivated and refined by a legacy of women throughout my lineage, passed down as a rite of passage from one black woman to the next. For indeed they would know why I would have to carry such a weight and why I would have to learn to make it my own.
My maternal grandmother, Mary Brown was born on a farm in South Carolina in the 1930’s during the Great Depression, two generations removed from the era of slavery. When I flip through grandma Mary’s photo albums I’m always captivated by her beauty, poise, and style. As my eyes roam over delicate black and white photos, nostalgia begins to set in as I focus on the details of each picture. The style of her hair, the beading in the dress she designed and made, the bond between her siblings and the joy on her face as she recounts the memories of each photo. As captivating as these photos are, they are unable to capture the trauma she faced daily growing up in the south. This young black girl with these beautiful brown eyes staring back at me from the photos wasn’t allowed to look a white man in his face. Unlike myself, my grandmother was taught to keep her head down, don’t make eye contact, don’t ask any questions and to only enter places that said “Colored.”
She was born during a time when the governing laws despised her very existence and were intentionally created to oppress people of color. A time where if she made eye contact, spoke unwantedly to a white person or ventured off into a ‘White Only’ space she could potentially be beaten, lynched or at the very least imprisoned. This was the daily fear she lived with. A fear that only black and brown people had to bear because the laws weren’t created equal and were meant to breed greater trepidation.
The 1960’s would present a movement towards civil rights, giving people of color hope and finally a sense of equality and liberation. Four years before the Civil Rights Act was signed my mother, Valerie Brown was born in Brooklyn, New York. This was a time when block parties in Brooklyn would bring the entire community together, when you not only knew your neighbor but proximity and love made them family, and you referred to them as auntie, unc’ or cuz. When afros with the black fist pick were a statement, when Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding were considered baby-making music — and James Brown’s hit “I’m Black and I’m Proud” felt like the new negro spiritual. It was a momentous era for a people who not only endured centuries of being mocked for the color of their skin, but were tortured, ostracized and systematically oppressed. They bore the weight of unaddressed trauma from kidnapping, enslavement, public lynching, massacres, and genocide from generations before.
But even hope is often met with adversity. As joy, liberation and black pride ran throughout the streets of Brooklyn, so did contempt. In hopes of a better education, my grandmother (as did many other black mothers) sent her daughter to a junior high school outside of their neighborhood. Growing up I remember my mother telling the stories of how she would go to school every day fearing for her life. Every day as she and her friends exited the train station near her school in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, a group of white boys from the local high school would harass and threaten them because they didn’t want black kids in their neighborhood. My mother and her friends would run to school as this group of teenagers chased after them with baseball bats and long fluorescent light bulbs. There’s one particular incident that my mother shares often. One day, as she and her group of friends prepared to exit the train station she saw the groups of boys had brought a dog along with them. Before they could run, the teenage boys released the dog. The dog jumped onto my mother’s friend and bit off a part of her nose. As my mother and her friends went to help the girl, one of the white boys spit on them and yelled “get these f’ing niggers out of here!” My heart breaks and I’m angered every time my mother recalls the events of this morning.
The matriarch of my family grew up in a time when their country didn’t view people of color as their own, didn’t have a government who protected their well being, or even a flag symbolizing the pride of all it’s people. A time that seems so far off, primitive and barbaric — but in reality is ever so near and present. With the aging in my grandmother's eyes, the stern tone in her voice, the over-protective nature of my mother, and all the many kisses she loves to give, I’m often reminded that these women continue to bear the weight of our country's past.
“Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.”
“Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”
My grandmother and mother have truly embodied these scriptures throughout their lives.
Most of my life I’ve mimicked the strength personified by these women. I’ve always instinctively known I was standing upon their shoulders. They’ve endured hardships, attacks, racism, sexism all to ensure I would have access to opportunities they didn’t have. To ensure that I would continue to carry their legacy with less scars then they’ve sustained. I’m grateful to witness their beauty clothed with such great strength all while knowing there’s a deeper story within each of them. Deeper than what I’ve been able to witness with my own eyes lies a history that often goes unnoticed and if allowed, would go untold.