I had exited the department store before it dawned on me that one of the Mother’s Day cards I purchased a few minutes earlier was superfluous.
My mother, Sideena Holt, had passed away a few years ago.
It was partly out of habit that I spent an inordinate amount of time finding just the right card for my maternal queen, even before researching an appropriate card for my wife.
Even though I labored long and hard to find the perfect card for my mother, I would always add my personal ‘message’ along with a gift—generally a religious item—to personalize the tribute.
My mother would always zone in on my message, and today I’m wearing one of the crosses I bought her eons ago that accompanied one of the cards.
My mother was a ‘true’ Christian, never wavering from the basic tenets of the Bible. In fact, she was an ordained minister, and thus the gifts I provided represented purity, recognition, and advocacy of the doctrine of discipleship. She loved the books I provided and the silver crosses, particularly one I purchased while visiting the Vatican. I also reclaimed ownership of a unique Bible that emphasized the role of women in the evolution of the church.
I’ve always had mixed emotions about Mother’s Day. It has become a profitable campaign for card makers and florists. Still, as my pastor/sister, Rev. Deborah Thomas, noted during our Sunday services, a single day of tribute to the person who influenced you most in life is disingenuous and just short of being dishonest.
Indeed, if you were to dedicate a day for your mother based on her contributions, it would include a tribute on ‘teachers’ day,’ ‘nursing day,’ ‘secretary’ and ‘maid day.’ Let’s not forget chauffeur, historian, and seamstress.
As a matter of fact, in most cases today, you may as well include Father’s Day too. Several years ago, I dedicated a column to a card I saw at one of those corner ‘grocery stores’ that read, “Happy Father’s Day…Mom.’ I mentioned the card to someone who thought it was funny. I thought it was sad.
In many respects, my generation faced obstacles and attitudes many young people today can’t envision much less relate to. Most of us had strong family foundations to see us through and a God to light our path.
During my youth, 78% of Milwaukee’s Black households were headed by two parents. Today 72% are governed by a single parent, 90% women, and over 70% poor.
Think of how much better Black life would be if even half of those sperm donors were fully invested. To think that there were more married Black couples days after the Emancipation Proclamation than today, is mindboggling.
And therein lies the great dichotomy of our village today. Even though mothers today have a rainbow of opportunities and information, my black and white world of yesterday provided many unique benefits.
Most mothers of my youth stood on a cultural and spiritual platform, whereas many if not most mothers today seem disoriented, lost, or unprepared for the roles they are cast in. Simply put, we were proud and po’, while many today are just poor and disenfranchised.
While I am elated to see an emerging sense of cultural relevance and Black resistance today, there are few representatives of the culture of poverty among them. And the myriad of negative social indicators—crime, unemployment, illiteracy—speaks to the other pandemic, one that can be traced back to the home and the AWOL fathers.
A case could also be made that far too many Black mothers today have handicapped their children through their poor parenting habits, educational apathy, and disengagement from the family support mechanism.
Most alarmingly, they reject both the Africentric and spiritual models that enabled my generation to survive and prosper amid a system of apartheid that continues to plague us to a lesser degree.
And because our leaders and laymen today are unwilling to acknowledge this paradigm, a large segment of our youth are trapped in poverty, handicapped by ignorance, and void of mores and values that are the necessary cornerstones of a community.
Trace the roots of our state’s nation-leading Black incarceration rates, poverty, and dropout rates, and you’ll find yourself at a nasty house with abused children. In other words, the culture of poverty.
It hurts my heart seeing children who know how to twerk and can recite the lyrics of a misogynistic and violent rap song but can’t spell their name, recite the alphabet, or identify basic colors before entering government schools.
If I were a politician, I would propose fines and probably remove an impressionable child from the home where the mother calls them bitches, and niggers (n-word), hoes, and bastards. Y’all know who I’m talking about. And through my prisms, that’s child abuse, as is smoking weed in front of their children, having a revolving bedroom door, and not promoting the educational welfare of their child.
Far too many generational egg donors get pregnant for the wrong reasons, don’t have a religious, cultural, or even familial foundation to stand upon. And as a result, their children suffer and generally slip through the cracks. Ask the average teacher today. Many are better mothers than the biological ones. They have to deal with discipline, ignorance, and attitudes we couldn’t envision during my youth.
This is not to suggest being a single mother is a recipe for dysfunction. Far from it. Even without financial or paternal support from a sperm donor, most mothers do an exceptional job.
But I would venture to guess most of them hang on to the basic tenets of parenting and community passed down by women like my mother.
In the grand scheme, my mother probably wasn’t unique or special to the world, but she was a crucial link in a village chain that gave us strength to conquer in spite of adverse socioeconomic factors.
Motherhood took on a different connotation during my youth, not only because Black life was vastly more difficult under apartheid but also because Black women had to navigate between Jim Crow and Uncle Sam.
Black mothers back then had to maintain the household, work outside it and plow a path of greatness for their children.
It wasn’t about survival as it is today. It was about creating foundations as they sought to tear down those barriers that hindered us.
By today’s standards, my mother was conservative and old-fashioned. But if that is true, we need more old-fashioned mothers today.
My mother ran our house while my father was hustling to provide the primary income. When he began losing his sight, my mother had to take up more of the slack but was strong enough that she could fill the void. She made a tasty pie out of rotten apples, bookshelves out of fallen trees, and ball gowns out of cast-away cloth.
In other words, she could make a dollar out of 25 cents and convinced us that we were royalty on a mission because it was ordained by God.
We grew up eating government cheese but never depended on any other assistance. Family, neighbors, and the church were our bedrock, and Nyame (God) our landlord and tour guide.
My mother taught us to take pride in whatever we had and to optimize scarce resources.
While my father never let his ‘disability’ handicap him and always contributed significantly to the family income, it was less than his income from one of those factories that drew his family to Milwaukee.
It was left to my mother to make sure the family income stretched.
If she had a dollar after paying bills, she would set aside a few pennies for clothes, most for food, a dime for a book, and what remained for cleaning supplies.
My mother’s culinary skills morphed into a catering business, which meant she could make meatloaf from leftovers and a ghetto burger that was far superior to anything you could get at McDonald’s or Wendy’s.
When I left home at 17 for the military, I hoped to never see another pinto, red, or navy bean again. But two years later, in the jungles of Vietnam, my mother sent me a care package of pinto beans and cornbread mix. With the help of a cook, I prepared that ‘downhome’ meal on an open fire. And like a cartoon, brothers came from the jungle, from the sky and the bomb shelters to partake. It turned into a celebration of culture and family.
My parents instilled us with a strong work ethic, which prompted me to get a job as a paperboy as soon as I was old enough. While my father slept in, my mother would accompany me to deliver the Sunday Journal in the frigid cold of predawn winters.
I also worked on my grandfather’s scrap metal truck and Mary’s Car Wash on 8th and Center Street. Mary was a neighbor, and because we were a village, she offered employment to boys on the block to keep us out of trouble and to put a few dollars in our pocket.
From that point on, I purchased my own clothes and gave them back to the household. My mother had planted a seed, and each of her children was nurtured by her philosophy. That’s why years later, each of us siblings financially supported whoever was in college at the time. That’s what we were taught to do. It also explains why I gave my mother a present on my birthday. She was surprised when I started that tradition, but I know she recognized her hand in the recipe.
The two most essential components of our development were education and a moral compass—spirituality.
Mom was a stalwart supporter of the Malcolm X slogan that education was the passport to a gratifying life. Information, knowledge, and eventually wisdom were God’s most powerful tools. Even if our schools were substandard or the teachers biased, those were mere hurdles that an inquisitive mind and discipline could overcome.
The oppressor can’t control an intelligent man or woman, nor can they hold him back for long. She once told me it was not a sin to be ignorant because ignorance was merely the absence of knowledge, which can be obtained. It was sinful to be stupid, which is the abuse or misuse of knowledge.
My sibling and I couldn’t go outside before doing homework (that she observed), and she valued her role as a partner in the educational process. That not only included attending all teacher conferences but encouraging us to read, write and research.
To further impact the government system of educational apartheid, my mother and father were among those who protested segregated (poorly financed) schools. She went so far as to participate in a protest at the site of new school construction that the racist Milwaukee School Board had designated for white children only. My mother and a dozen other women chained themselves to bulldozers at the site. Of course, it was never reported in the White media, which is why I chose the Black Press for my career.
It’s probably not well known, but most of our ancestors migrated from the deep south to secure better opportunities, including schools for their children.
My paternal grandparents came from Georgia with that ideal. Even though my mother was born and raised in Galesburg, Illinois, she was but one generation shy of speaking with a southern accent herself.
Those two cultures were evident in our household. Strong families on both sides, with clearly defined roles for each parent. My grandparents started the state’s first Black nursing home, and my grandfather had a scrap metal truck. He was the first Black man I ever recall being addressed as ‘mister’ by a white man.
Every Sunday morning, you could find the Holt children in church with my mother (Pops encouraged us but generally didn’t participate). He also always had an excuse for midweek services and summer-long bible study, although I learned many years later he had ‘earned’ a minister’s license from some correspondence course.
My family followed the tenets of the Colored (now Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) denomination and took its tenets seriously.
My mother, uncle, and cousin were ministers.
My sister, brother, brother-in-law and several cousins are ministers today. God was always an essential part of our family for guidance, protection, and inspiration.
My mother considered it blasphemy that a gangster rapper can call sisters bitches, promote drug use and condone killing, but perform while wearing a five-pound platinum cross. She felt the same way about ‘preacher pimps,’ ‘insurance salesmen’ who are motivated by money and status.
Mom epitomized that adage about African Americans being spiritually conservative, but politically liberal.
The 10 Commandments were taken seriously in my household, and even as an adult, I would not dare think about bringing a girlfriend to my mother’s house to spend the night.
She also believed in loving your neighbor, helping the poor and disadvantaged, and spreading the word of the gospel, albeit without ramming it down someone’s throat.
And while she never espoused it, she definitely felt that cleanliness was next to godliness. As a result, we didn’t litter, mowed our lawns, and picked up trash in front of our neighbor’s homes.
Fortunately, that cultural nuance was shared, and while many homes in the ‘ghetto’ were old and run down, I grew up in a clean and orderly community, where we respected other people’s property.
I recall my mother once trying to justify the lack of grass on the home of many recent migrants from the deeper-than-deep south, saying they were farmers who stumped out their grass so they could see any snakes that would otherwise hide among the grass. I assume she was facetious, but it was apparent most of those who participated in the last great migration had a different set of values. I heard–but could not confirm–that my mother worked with the late Marie Gaines and other Black middle-class Black women in various etiquette classes specifically created to help newly arrived poor Black southerners make the transition.
Our home was a reflection of our family values, and while economic circumstances may have forced us to live in the ‘ghetto,’ we took pride in our homes, whether rented or owned.
Each of us had chores, and no excuse was good enough. In addition to my regular ‘manly duties,’ I had to scrub the bathroom floor with a brush.
My mother taught each of us to be independent. We were taught to cook, iron, wash clothes and care for each other. My father taught and expected me to fight thugs, and anyone came within kissing distance of my sisters.
Because I was sandwiched between two sisters, we were each required to leave and return together (even though we separated as soon as we rounded the corner and made plans to meet up before our curfew).
My mother would be standing in the doorway when we returned home from the quarter basement parties.
Moms understood the temptations before us, but she was also comforted by Proverbs 22:6 (Look it up if you have a Bible). Apparently, someone hacked the Bible, and now that verse is written in Japanese because many parents today haven’t read it, much less fulfilled its mandate.
That sad reality can be expounded upon for other verses dealing with values and mores.
I know it frustrated my mother to no end if she encountered street litter, heard a child cussing out their mother, or committing an act of violence for no reason other than to prove their manliness.
I remember when I was taking my mother somewhere, and we stopped for a funeral prossession. She almost came to tears when she watched a young punk driving through a funeral procession. Ironically, a similar act of disrespect occurred when we were taking my mother to the cemetery.
That never happened during my era, nor did you have terrorists speeding through residential areas at the speed of sound, throwing trash out their car windows, or using profanity around their teachers, preachers, or parents.
I never cussed in front of my mother, not only because it was disrespectful, but also because she often explained that people who use a lot of profanity had limited vocabulary.
She made sure that wasn’t the case for any of us. If there was a shortage of unread books, she didn’t mind if we read the newspaper comics; but you better read something every day. And oh yeah, we subscribed to the daily newspapers, and it wasn’t unusual to find a Chicago Defender laying around. And we didn’t use ‘ain’t,’ double negatives or poor syntax in my family. Like most Black families, we were bi-lingual, but proper English was our first language unless we knew Swahili.
I still open doors for women, carry bags for the elderly, and give up my seat on a bus for a female.
An aunt, whose philosophy mirrored my mother’s, once turned me into the police when she saw me riding around in a stolen car. When I went through that period of juvenile delinquency, my parents enlisted me in the Navy two weeks after my 17th birthday.
My mother encouraged me to find a dorm room four years later when I returned from Vietnam, suffering from PTSD. Though she was tolerant of my ‘illness,’ she drew the line when I talked my brother out of remaining in the Boy Scouts, which I viewed as a paramilitary organization created to maintain White Supremacy.
Instead, I planned to train him in weaponry, and the martial arts for the pending race wars I believed were coming.
Even though I moved out, Mom never abandoned me, and the proudest moment of my life took place several years later when we walked across the stage together to accept our college diplomas.
Yep, in retrospect, I was blessed to have been born during a period when you saw your parents engaged in the struggle for equality and justice. It was an era when parents’ primary goal was to make sure their children exceeded whatever you accomplished, a time when we understood the importance of education, a relationship with Nyame, and fortifying our village.
Rev. Sideena Holt was small in stature, but a giant among mothers. She viewed motherhood as a calling, a God-ordained responsibility. She was on a mission and viewed motherhood and maintaining family as her life goal.
Even as she lay dying of cancer in the hospice, she refused to take pain medication because she wanted to enjoy her final days with her family.
And she expressed guilt that she would not be around if we needed something.
When her friends were retiring, she took on the responsibility of raising a great-granddaughter from infancy. She finally exhaled when my grandniece was accepted into college. By then, my father was completely blind, so she had to care for him, raise a child and continue working. She was amazing.
It may sound far-fetched, but I believe if our community had more strong women like my mother, and marriage maintained its relevancy, Africentric culture continued to be our foundation for unity, and people still believed in God, we wouldn’t face the myriad problems we confront today.
We should have more accountable politicians because people would vote and monitor our elected officials. The Black unemployment rate would be minimal, and the illiteracy rate significantly reduced because parents would involve themselves in the educational process.
It’s not a coincidence that Milwaukee hosted a Black bank, savings and loan, movie theater, brewery, and hospital during my youth, and all of those institutions are gone today because of lack of support.
People shared and cared, and you didn’t have to drive around fast food bags and liquor bottles in the streets.
Every day I see or hear someone screaming Black Lives Matter, but they don’t vote (only 10% voted in last month’s elections), participate in their children’s educations, or discipline their children.
Too many of us have voluntarily put the shackles back on our wrists. I heard someone recently refer to Jesus as a ‘my nigger (n-word),’ and a sister refer to her mother as a ‘bitch.’
This ridiculous paradigm is consistent with spending food money on name-brand shoes for their children and rent money on weaves and wigs. They look good, but act ignorant.
While working as a mentor at Washington high school a few years ago, I can recall a dozen incidents when young mothers of similar age to their high school daughters camped outside the school to fight a student who got into an argument with their child.
If my mother came to school, it was for a conference with my teacher or to look in on me. My father reportedly interrupted a class to snatch my younger brother out of the classroom for talking back to the teacher. Today he is a top executive in Atlanta.
Yeah, the not so good old days had its advantages because most Black households had a woman who saw the parenting responsibility through the same prescription that my mother did.
For the record, I didn’t take the Mother’s Day card back to the store. Instead, I added my personal message of appreciation to my mother’s card before putting it in an album along with pictures of the person who defined my world and my philosophy.
Hotep.
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