Black Motherhood: Love & Resistance / Kelly Brown Douglas

For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

“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? (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198292/sister-outsider-by-audre-lorde/)
• 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 (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/117647/beloved-by-toni-morrison/)
• 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 (https://orbisbooks.com/products/resurrection-hope)
• 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 (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47559/mother-to-son)
• 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 better than out generation or previous generations in enacting a world where all mothers, children, can be free from anything that does not affirm and respect their sacred humanity.”
• Mamie Till and the open casket of Emmett Till; the parents of Trayvon Martin
• We forget that these are people’s children, these are mothers who have lost their children.
• “We see Black bodies, but not Black human beings.”
• Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin by Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin (https://jacarandabooksartmusic.com/products/rest-in-power-1)
• See the humanity of Black mothers and their children

“The Sermon in the Clearing”

Toni Morrison’s Beloved

“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in the grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you*! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your* mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.” Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh.

Mother to Son
BY LANGSTON HUGHES

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

About Kelly Brown Douglas

The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Ph.D., is Interim President of the Episcopal Divinity School. From 2017 to 2023, she was Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Theology. She was named the Bill and Judith Moyers Chair in Theology at Union in November 2019. She also serves as the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral and Theologian in Residence at Trinity Church Wall Street.

Prior to Union, Douglas served as Professor of Religion at Goucher College where she held the Susan D. Morgan Professorship of Religion and is now Professor Emeritus. Before Goucher, she was Associate Professor of Theology at Howard University School of Divinity (1987-2001) and Assistant Professor of Religion at Edward Waters College (1986-1987). Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1983, Douglas holds a master’s degree in theology and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Union.

Douglas is the author of many articles and six books, including Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, and Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter, which won the 2023 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Her academic work has focused on womanist theology, sexuality and the Black church.