The heartbreaking tenderness of black women and their majestic strength speak of the heroic survival of a people who were stolen into subjugation, denied chastity and refused innocence.
These women have descended from grandmothers and great-grandmothers who knew the lash firsthand, and to whom protection was nothing more than an abstraction. Their faces are here for the ages to regard and wonder, but they are whole women. Their hands have brought new life into the world, nursed the sick and folded the winding-sheets. Their wombs have held the promise of a race that has proved in each challenging century that despite threats and mayhem it has come to stay. Their feet have trod the shifting swampland of insecurity, yet they have tried to step neatly onto the footprints of mothers who went before. They are not apparitions; they are not superwomen; despite the enormity of their struggles they are not larger than life. Their humanness is evident in their accessibility. We are able to enter into the spirit of these women and rejoice in their warmth and courage.
Precious jewels all. Thanks to their persistence, art, sublime laughter and love we may all yet survive our grotesque history.
*Mari Evans, I Am A Black Woman.
†Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, The Slave Auction.
She stood before me, a dolled-up, pretty yellow woman, seven inches shorter than my six-foot bony frame. Her eyes were soft and her voice was brittle. “You’re determined to leave? Your mind’s made up?”
I was seventeen and burning with passionate rebelliousness. I was also her daughter, so whatever independent spirit I had inherited had been nurtured by living with her and observing her for the past four years.
“You’re leaving my house?”
I collected myself inside myself and answered, “Yes. Yes, I’ve found a room.”
“And you’re taking the baby?”
“Yes.”
She gave me a smile, half proud and half pitying.
“All right, you’re a woman. You don’t have a husband, but you’ve got a three-month-old baby. I just want you to remember one thing. From the moment you leave this house, don’t let anybody raise you. Every time you get into a relationship you will have to make concessions, compromises, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But keep in mind Grandmother Henderson in Arkansas and I have given you every law you need to live by. Follow what’s right. You’ve been raised.”
More than forty years have passed since Vivian Baxter liberated me and handed me over to life. During those years I have loved and lost, I have raised my son, set up a few households and walked away from many. I have taken life as my mother gave it to me on that strange graduation day all those decades ago.
In the intervening time when I have extended myself beyond my reach and come toppling Humpty-Dumpty-down on my face in full view of a scornful world, I have returned to my mother to be liberated by her one more time. To be reminded by her that although I had to compromise with life, even life had no right to beat me to the ground, to batter my teeth down my throat, to make me knuckle down and call it Uncle. My mother raised me, and then freed me.
And now, after so many eventful years of trials, successes and failures, my attention is drawn to a bedroom adjoining mine where my once feisty mother lies hooked by pale blue wires to an oxygen tank, fighting cancer for her life.
I think of Vivian Baxter, and I remember Frederick Douglass’s mother, enslaved on a plantation eleven miles from her infant son, yet who, after toiling a full day, would walk the distance to look at her child hoping that he would sense a mother’s love, then return to the plantation in time to begin another day of labor. She believed that a mother’s love brought freedom. Many African Americans know that the most moving song created during the centuries of slavery was and remains “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”
As a mother and a daughter myself, I have chosen certain songs and poems to take to my mother’s room, and there we will laugh and cry together.
I pray I shall have the courage to liberate my mother when the time comes. She would expect that from me.
There are smart alecks who feel comfortable speaking long and loudly about a multiplicity of subjects with no evidence that they know what they are talking about. Then there are those who do know a little about a lot of things and speak judiciously about what they know. And finally, that rarity, the polymath who knows a great deal about everything. I have met only three such persons in my life.
One was the late Isaac Asimov, the second is Dr. Richard Long, Atticus Professor at Emory University in Georgia, and the third is Vusumsi Linda Make, a South African freedom fighter and onetime representative of the Pan African Congress, which was a volatile rival of the then conservative African National Congress.
The active mind replete with encyclopedic knowledge has always excited me, and when that brain is in the possession of a man, no matter what he looks like, I have found myself stirred physically and romantically.
When I was young and went frequently to public gatherings, I made certain to keep my ears and eyes alert for men of exceptional intelligence. Whenever I spotted such a man, my behavior was so uninhibited that women friends would admonish me in a stage whisper: “Maya, get to know him first.”
John and Grace Killens gave a party for two South African freedom fighters who were at the UN to petition that world body to press for an end to apartheid. When I heard Vus Make’s soft voice, filtering through its Xhosa accent, I perked up and leaned in toward him. He spoke to the entire gathering, but so far as I was concerned, he was talking just to me. He dazzled me with data and fractured me with facts. I sat erect, the very picture of rapt interest. Afterward he escorted me home. Two weeks later he proposed, and four weeks after we met we were honeymooning in London. Six months later I was questioning not only my judgment but my sanity.
True, he possessed every bit of information about the known world, how many square miles were arable in the Sahel, why the French were involved in Algeria’s Black Hand organization, how long King Chaka had occupied the Zulu throne, how long Sisyphus had been pushing the rock, even how long the train has been gone, but he had no idea of how to make me happy. The same brain that retained reams of information, stacks of names, figures and dates, could not (I dare not think would not) deduce that I needed bedroom discourse, not boardroom dialogue, that our marriage was suffocating in the thin intellectual air that he breathed comfortably but that could not fill my lungs.
Because he was tender, I thought he was offering tenderness. He had startling intellect and an impressive accumulation of information, but was shy a mile from romance.
I left the marriage after it became lifeless, and I’m still thankful for the early passion we both brought to the union. I am even more thankful for the lesson learned. Heed the African saying “Be wary when a naked person offers you his shirt.”
Before beginning a long and arduous journey the prudent traveler checks her maps, clocks and address-book entries and makes certain that her clothes will suit the weather she plans to encounter. If the trip includes crossing national boundaries, she examines her travel documents for their validity and, to the best of her ability, furnishes her wallet with the appropriate currency for her destination. This traveler urges us toward sober deliberation and stolid concentration. The second traveler is less careful, not so meticulous in planning the trip and, as a result, will encounter delays, disruptions and even despair. When disappointments mount to intolerable proportions, this traveler may even give up and return home, defeated. We learn from this example to either prepare well or stay at home.
It is the third, the desperate traveler, who teaches us the most profound lesson and affords us the most exquisite thrills. She touches us with her boldness and vulnerability, for her sole preparation is the fierce determination to leave wherever she is and her only certain destination is somewhere other than where she has been. An old blues describes this eager traveler:
I got the key to the Highway,
Booked down and I’m hound to go
br /> I’m going to leave here running
’cause walkings most too slow.
Oprah Winfrey belongs to the third group of wanderers. She has been in voluntary transit since entering her teens. We know some sparse details of Oprah’s passage, and stand in wonder at the awful inheritance that she had to either carry with her or jettison:
She was born poor and powerless in a land where power is money and money is adored.
Born black in a land where might is white and white is adored.
Born female in a land where decisions are masculine and masculinity controls.
With such burdensome baggage it would seem that travel was unlikely if not downright impossible. Yet, among the red-clay hills of Mississippi the small, plain black girl with the funny name decided that she would travel and she would be her own conductor and porter. She would make the journey and carry her own baggage.
Today, even in the triumphal atmosphere that surrounds her, the keen observer can detect a steely determination in her voice and the resoluteness in her dark eyes.
She used faith, fate and a smile whose whiteness rivals a flag of truce to bring her from the dirt roads of the South to the world’s attention. The Creator’s blessings—intelligence, lively imagination and a relentless drive—have brought Oprah from the poignancy of a lonely childhood to the devotion of millions.
One loyal fan has said, “We can thank Oprah for some of the sanity in our country. She is America’s most accessible and honest psychiatrist.”
Oprah, as talk-show host, tries to maintain a calm façade as she lends an ear to brutes, bigots and bagmen, but her face often betrays her. Her eyes will fill with tears when she listens to the lament of mothers mistreated by their offspring, and they dart indignantly at the report of cruelty against children and savagery against the handicapped. The full lips spread into a wide, open smile when a guest or audience member reveals a daring spirit or a benevolent wit.
She is everyone’s largehearted would-be sister who goes where the fearful will not tread. She asks our questions and waits with us for the answers.
The road has been long and the path has been stony. After her parents separated from each other and from her, she was left in the care of a grandmother who believed in the laying on of hands in all ways. She learned behavior from her grandmother, which she still honors today. She kneels nightly to thank God for His protection and generosity, for His guidance and forgiveness. She has a genuine fear of sin and sincerely delights in goodness. Unheralded success has not robbed her of her sense of wonder, nor have possessions made her a slave to property.
The little-girl laughter that erupts unexpectedly midsentence should not lure any observer into believing her to be childish, nor should the direct glance encourage any to feel that she is a hardened sophisticate. She is an honest, hardworking woman who has developed an unusual degree of empathy and courage. Oprah is making her journey at what might seem to be a dizzying pace, but it is her pace and she alone has set her tempo.
Africa, as impression, as idea, lies deep in the labyrinth of human imagination. Often its shape is beyond the will of words and its silhouette below the strata of conscious recovery. It lives in us on a primordial level, inexplicable but undeniable. We are the spring boughs with only the vaguest memory of winter’s ruthless treatment of the tree. Despite a spate of nature documentaries, and despite endless shelves of travel books, Africa remains for most of us a hazy and remote illusion.
True or contrived, or possibly both true and contrived, African myths have wandered around the globe, half understood, half believed, half unbelievable, always adding to their mystery.
The unending human quest in Africa for treasure—that wild impulse toward the accumulation of precious metals, minerals and possession even of other human beings—can account for some of the misconceptions about Africa and the erroneous fantastic descriptions of the place and its peoples.
People could plow the earth with impunity for its bright gold and its glint of diamonds without determining that those wonderful elements were free booty only because they were found on “the dark continent.”
The place of origin of Homo sapiens could not possibly have been stripped of its strongest sons and daughters for the purpose of satisfying greed unless one could name the place (and think of it) as not the First, or even Second, but the Third World.
The movements of the human tribe are traceable through the folktales, songs, detritus left by wars and the triumphal display of enemy totems captured by the victors, and it is possible to follow demographic shifts of families, clans and tribes by assessing their search for food, water, safety and arable land. We might conclude, then, that basic human need impels the species toward self-improvement as well as self-preservation. But an irresistible need to define oneself and a curiosity about the intangible nature of nature might just as logically explain why groups of nomadic human beings elect to stay in semipermanent homelands. And their art, the graphic descriptions of the known and the unknown, might have furnished the needed security in a world rife with insecurity.
For millennia, men have described their own masculine worlds, worlds both tangible and spiritual. They have used wood, bronze, stone and ivory. Their concepts of their universe gave shape to martial dances and substance to tales of battles ending in triumph or defeat. The unnamed sun and uncounted stars were given character and place in their stories. The tides and seasons were recognized by the rhythms of the men’s drums.
In Africa, as in other places of the world, women created their own portraits—distinctive portraits of themselves and their universe. They used cloth, beads, leather and clay to express their views of the real and abstract worlds. Beliefs, spirits, omens, djinns, disappointments, fears and accomplishments were named, confessed, called, admitted and explained in the women’s designs.
Their art, like all art, means to delight the eye, console the troubled mind, appease the highest authority and educate the children in the ways of the world. The aim also, whether or not articulated, is to infuse and sustain the family in an appreciation for life and the expectation of beauty.
West African women, unlike their East African sisters, eschew the bright reds and other primary colors. They allow themselves black, white, ocher, yellow and beige earth tones. They do employ blue, but it is the blue-black, electric indigo or the soft, subtle blue of West African mornings.
The Yoruba, one of West Africa’s most ancient and surviving cultures, has roots extending back to 300 B.C. They were and are an artistically advanced people whose ancient symbols and mythologies are still in popular use and still influential. There is a Yoruba legend that explains the creation of the universe, Ife (the Yoruba Homeland) and human beings. The folktale praises Olakun, the goddess of the seas, as being an expert weaver. She is also reputed to possess an outstanding talent in the dyeing of cloth. In an attempt to regain her power over the earth, which was taken away from her because she acted rashly, Olakun challenges Olorun, the ruler of the sky, to a weaving contest. Olorun is aware of the power of her art and will not meet Olakun fairly. He sends a chameleon, which is able to instantly imitate all the goddess’s colors and patterns. She concludes that if a lowly chameleon, who is only in the service of Olorun, is able to hold his own against her talents, then assuredly Olorun himself would defeat her. Thus, the woman’s art of design and dyeing was never really bested or even matched by man. She was merely taken in by man’s trickery, and her balance of art was set askew because she lost her internal moral balance.
Among most West African societies, outer beauty is believed to be the result of good inner moral character. The Yoruba love of moderation is expressed in their admiration of the cool character Iwu Tutu, which implies self-discipline, reflection and restraint.
The West African women’s dress designs and patterns are said to set the continent’s standard for modern modes, and are often found transformed in Western magazines of high fashion. Most of the ancient designs, whether on cloth, walls o
f houses or on earthenware, were inspired by proverbs and sayings. Today in some cases the meanings have been lost. But the illustrations have remained.
One popular West African design displays two and three rectangular forms crisscrossing on contrasting colored cloth. It is called Lai Momo, which translates from the Ga as Burnt Sticks. It comes from the saying “Wood once burned and allowed to go out will be more easily ignited than green wood, freshly hewn.” When a woman attends a meeting of mediation, wearing Lai Momo, she tells the gathering that she is more amenable to reconciliation than to continuing the strife. So, as in all African life, art functions.
Another proverb that provided inspiration for a Nigerian cloth design is “If you do not appreciate the things you have, other people will treat them with contempt.” Good counsel for both the young and the aged.
Whether or not the arrangement of lines and colors has remembered roots in ancient maxims, there is a great aesthetic sense that animates the crafts of painting, weaving, dyeing cloth and pot making. Women, using ordinary clay found in riverbeds and employing their hands as paintbrushes, produce a powerful vehicle for visual pleasure. Their crafts are also public statements of their personal creeds.
The simple materials are forged into plastic designs that will be as temporary as the length of time between rainfalls, and with no lasting staying power against the insistent sun. These artists, however, do not seem to need promises of longevity, nor do they exhibit a craving for notice out of the ordinary. In fact, one of the most notable characteristics of house painting among West African women is the camaraderie found among women sharing the creation of design. Family members and those attached by friendship often join together in the industry of decoration. When they do, it is agreed that the principal owner will contribute the major design, but it is also expected that every woman will bring something of her own to add to the overall effect.