Five-year-old me is standing in the kitchen, the last room of my grandmama’s shotgun house, in Lepanto, Arkansas, on no particular morning in the late-1960s.
She pours us both a cup of “coffee” (mine 99% condensed Pet milk and 3000% sugar). We’re listening to the strains of moment-defining soul music broadcasting from WDIA — the first radio station in the country with programming meant entirely for Black people — streaming to us across country byways and cotton fields all the way from Memphis, Tennessee.
This is the room where my grandmama dispenses catnip tea for measles, or reminds me to hold my ear as she presses the hot comb against my just-oiled edges, or admonishes me to “stay out grown folks business” when she catches me listening too intently to her and her women friends talk their talk.
My grandmama is a lot of woman, a solid six-foot-two with reliable shoulders and real-woman hips. When she moves . . . the room parts around her.
By the standards of the bigger world, she ain’t got much.
She’s a poor Black woman with a third-grade education — separate and unequal — who works as a maid; she has a husband who makes his living at a cotton gin, 12 children, and a five-room house with shiplap walls and plank floors that lose the fight against the cold in the winter and fail to hold off the heat in the swelter of summertime. The one thing she owns, this house, stands on cinderblocks a couple feet off the ground.
But, like I said, my grandmama is a lot of woman. And she can make a lot happen. Like when she refuses to follow the rules of segregation, especially when they persist in the post-segregation world we find ourselves heading into.
Just because laws passed and the “Colored Only” and “White Only” signs are starting to come off the glass doesn’t mean that doors to equality and opportunity fly open. Mostly, they still have to be pushed open from the outside — occasionally, a brick might have to fly through first.
My grandmama’s hands are made for bricks. She stands up tall when she talks and looks people dead in the eye. Everybody. Even and especially the ones the rules say she’s not supposed to.
As we sip our coffee, we listen to The Impressions pouring from my grandmama’s little cream-colored plastic portable radio sitting on the shelf over her kitchen table. They tell our people to “Get ready” as she starts to pull together ingredients for a dinner that will simmer and stew all day in one pot, the way dinner has to cook when nobody has the luxury of standing over the stove and keeping careful watch over several dishes.
There might be greens thrown in the pot with neck-bones while Aretha belts out “Respect.”
Or, brown beans thrown in the pot with neck-bones while Jerry Butler tells us that “Only the Strong Survive.”
Or, neck-bones thrown in the pot just to have some neck-bones to eat while Curtis Mayfield tells us we can “move on up.”
Or, maybe all the neck-bones (and every other kind of meat) is gone, and there might be corn bread fixin’ to be crumbled up in pot likker while James Brown lets us know we BETTER “Say it Loud!” So black. So proud:
Some people say we got a lot of malice, some say it’s a lotta nerve
But I say we won’t quit movin’ until we get what we deserve
We’ve been ‘buked and we’ve been scorned
We’ve been treated bad, talked about as sure as you’re born
But just as sure as it take two eyes to make a pair, huh!
Brother we can’t quit until we get our share …
And my grandmama, without saying a word, shows me just how true this all is. Maybe that seems natural and unremarkable now. But back then, this was miracle work.
Because this is back when being “colored” or a “Negro” means that you’re being pressed down by a soul-killing lie: Being colored or Negro means you are supposed to be nothing and nobody. And you are never going to get the chance to be anything because God, the law, and some people—the ones who believe they’re better than you—say so at every turn.
Even trying to be something and somebody can bring down humiliation at best and wrath at worse. There are steep penalties for “getting out of your [racial] place” — sometimes deadly ones. But my grandmama shows me how to stand up to that lie and anybody telling it.
Like when she refuses to stand back in the grocery store until all the white customers have been served. Like when she cusses out the electric meter man who, having installed meters for the first time on the newly electrified Black side of town, accuses her of tampering with the one on her house.
Like when she (harmonizing with my mama) tells me that my books are my way up and out. And that she is so proud of my book learning. And that book learning is only one part of wisdom. “Ain’t NO fool like a educated fool,” she reminds me.
Like when she (and many other women from my community) decides to be how people who are Black and women aren’t supposed to be: Bold.
My grandmama helped me grow my Black womanhood bold and strong and bookish in the soul-music-filled kitchen in her little shotgun house in a world that was struggling over what it thought she and I should be.
But she knew what I could be. She dreamed it and fought for it. She connected me to our community’s history of resilience. And she let me know in so many acts of love that I was the Black future as both Black and a woman, even though the world might not understand that yet.
She was an ordinary woman doing the extraordinary work of change through the everyday act of asserting her Blackness, her womanhood, her humanity as worthy of dignity and respect. And mine.
So, thanks to my Grandmama,
Josie Avant Young,
my Black womanhood is
bold,
bookish,
and born in the soul-music South.
As we sit at the end of Black History Month and the beginning of Women’s History Month, I’m wondering: How did important Black women in your life help you build your Black womanhood?
Leave a Comment
MonaLisa Covington says
This is very educational for our youth today as our grandparents instilled in our lives. It reminds me of the poem, “Hey Black Child” And It Is So Father God. These stories has imparted great worth in my life like my book, Let Me Breathe by MonaLisa Covington during the CoronaVirus Pandemic 2021.
Melvina Young says
MonaLisa,
Thank you so much for reading. Glad to have you here in community with us.
KaDai says
Powerful!!!
Melvina Young says
KaDai,
I’m honored that my story holds power for you. Hoping it brings to mind all the foremothers who brought you through on love.
Kennesha Poe Buycks says
I can relate to this on SO many levels. My memaw was big in statute and attitude as well and was “my person” for so many reasons. Your story and storytelling prowess are beautifully mastered here and I so enjoyed reading your words. Thank you for sharing this with me/us/the world. ❤️
Melvina Young says
Kennesha,
I’m so glad you can relate! I love hearing how your grandmother was your person. We are made in their molds, amen?
J Nicole says
Thank you for this….
Melvina Young says
J Nicole,
Thank you so much for reading and being a part of the conversation.
Bertie Brown says
Such a much-needed message. Your grandmother was quite a lady. Wish I could have spent more time with my grandmother, but she lived in a different town. She was exceptional lady, knowledgeable beyond her years. Hoping that these blogs are an inspiration to others as they are to me. Thank you and continued blessings in hope that you will continue to inspire others.
Melvina Young says
Bertie,
Thank you so much for reading and sharing a little bit of your grandmother. I love hearing how she inspired you even though she didn’t live close to you.
So happy to have you here in this conversation. I love that this space allows us to inspire one another.
Pamela C.Stokes says
Wonderfully inlighning, centainly reflects my History, my Grandma and Ganddad for that matter along with my Great GrandDads. Who where able to florish in spite OFF.
Pamela
Melvina Young says
Pamela,
I’m so glad my story resonated with you and brought to mind the power of the people who loved you, lifted you, shaped you, and made a way for you.
Querida Duncalfe says
This is so wonderful. It seems like with each passing day I realize more deeply how much my selfhood has been formed by Black women.
Thank you for sharing your grandmama with us.
Melvina Young says
Querida,
Thank you so much for reading. I agree with you. Knowing what our foremothers did to make a space in the world for us and see us flourish can give us our fullest sense of ourselves as Black women.
Nicole Jones says
I loved this.. Thank you so much for sharing. I am about to be a 1st time grandma so I hope I can teach my grandbaby and I hope I have already taught my about to graduate from University of Southern Mississippi daughter some black womanhood, black girl magic, resilience, independency and most importantly…love. thank you again.
Melvina Young says
Nicole, congratulations on your first grandbaby!
You will imprint your the baby with the same love, power, and wisdom you gave your daughter. That’s a beautiful kind of generational wealth.
Donna says
Oh my God! I wept as I read this because our background as children is eerily similar! I grew up in the little town of Senatobia, Miss just 40 miles down I-55 from Memphis, TN so I grew up listening to WDIA as well. Lost my mother to a stroke when I was only 10 so my granny, dad and my older sisters raised us. I’m from a family of 12 as well. I so enjoyed reading your story! Be blessed my sister!