Black Motherhood: Love & Resistance / Kelly Brown Douglas

“Black motherhood has consistently been a contested space. Black women have just fought for their rights to be. And so when we say Black motherhood, to me, the reality of Black motherhood itself is the resistance. And we still stand and we claim what it means to be Black mothers. We've got to consistently stand firm trying to raise healthy children in spite of it all.”
Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas (Episcopal Divinity School) discusses the gift and grace of Black motherhood to the world and what we can learn from Black mothers about love and resistance. Appreciating the example they set for the meaning of justice that emerges from love, and the capacity for love that emerges from justice, Dr. Douglas offers beautiful examples and expressions of the joy and abundance that Black motherhood means.
She reflects on the impact of her maternal grandmother on her life; the Langston Hughes poem “Mother and Son”-which is a testimony of perseverance and robust agency; the glorious hush harbor sermon and ode to self-love and dignity, delivered by Baby Suggs Holy, known as “The Sermon in the Clearing" in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. It gave me chills to hear Dr. Douglas read the sermon. She looks back to the example set by Mamie Till, the mother of Emmitt Till, who as a 14 year old boy was lynched in 1955. And Dr. Douglas speaks in witness to the fear, pain, and grief of the Black mother during the Black Lives Matter era, drawing not only on her expertise in Womanist Theology, but her close relationship with her own son.
Show Notes
• Black motherhood and womanist theology; listening to the experiences of black motherhood
• Audre Lorde “to love and to resist at the same time” - Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches? (www.penguinran...)
• What does it mean to love and resist at the same time?
• Legacy passed on through motherhood; loving oneself while resisting that which says you are not a sacred child of God - helping black children to understand that they are somebody.
• Where have you been inspired by womanist scholars and by other sources in the Christian tradition and beyond for really strengthening the kind of love you are describing there?
• Inspired by the woman in her life - maternal grandmother especially
• The Great Migrations from the South
• Grandmother worked as an elevator operator, a job traditionally associated with with black women
• Always made a way for her grandchildren to have fun and set aside money for them after high school - making sure they felt important
• Accountable to one’s legacy, to the generations that came before.
• “You struggle for the children that you can’t see.”
• You’ve written about intergenerational dialogue, about communication and so tell me a little bit more about how you see love expressed through honest, truthful, wise communication?
• Communication as a part of love and a part of resistance; telling the story with tough truth and means of survival
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (www.penguinran...)
• Would you mind quoting it and kind of giving some context for listeners that are not familiar with that sermon?
• Sermon of self love; love of the whole self as an act against those that do not love you
• To parent Black, the love and the harsh truth
• Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter by Kelly Brown Douglas (orbisbooks.com...)
• Having these conversations with her own son
• Philandro Castile killing
• “These are the dialogues you cannot shy away from when you’re trying to raise a Black child, that you have to have, that you have to tell them the truth, you provide them the tools for surviving, those sort of practical tools. And at the same time, you have to provide them with the inside stuff that allows them to resist all of that stuff on the outside that tells them that they aren’t worth it.”
• The tools to resist and then thrive; the world suddenly becoming knowledgable on the conversations being had with Black children
• Not thinking it as THE conversation but one piece of intergenerational dialogue
• Mother to Son by Langston Hughes (www.poetryfoun...)
• How you see the possibility of Black motherhood passing on this love, which is resistance, this dual side of what that is? It’s kind of paradoxical holding them both together, how that might speak not just to the son but to the world?
• Black motherhood itself consistently attacked and contested
• Moynihan in 1960s
• “Black women have just fought for their rights to be. And so when we say Black motherhood itself is the resistance.”
• Moral imaginary of justice
• “Because if we don’t have that dialogue that speaks to the hard truths and pushes forward an agenda of justice, then we cannot expect the next generation to be any bette...