Quiet No More

Honoring the Grady Girls: Legacy of Courage and Community Impact

• Carmen Cauthen

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Have you ever paused to consider the silent pillars of strength in our communities—those women whose names may not be etched in history books but whose impact resonates through generations? Join me, Carmen Cauthen, as I recount the inspiring stories of my mother and her sisters, the legendary Grady Girls from Mount Olive, North Carolina. These women broke barriers in education and activism during the Great Depression, leaving an indelible mark on their communities. Inspired by their courage, I set out to ensure their legacies are celebrated, nominating my mother for the Raleigh Hall of Fame and crafting an event reminiscent of Oprah's Legends Ball to honor these unsung heroes.

In an era where women's contributions often went unnoticed, "Quiet No More" shines a deserving spotlight on Black women who have worn multiple hats—caretaker, educator, community leader—without the applause they truly deserved. By penning a book dedicated to these formidable women and hosting a celebratory dinner event in Raleigh, I aim to document their invaluable contributions and inspire others to appreciate their legacy. 

This is a heartfelt invitation to embrace a legacy of recognition and ensure that the stories of these remarkable women continue to inspire respect in the generations to come.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More. I am a woman of substance, strong and beautiful. Do you know what that means? I hope not, because I sort of created it myself and it has a special meaning for me, and I've been toying with woman of substance, strong and beautiful for a couple of years in my head, but I knew what it meant and I knew that I needed to go somewhere with it.

Speaker 1:

My mother was a woman of substance. In fact, in Mount Olive, north Carolina, where she grew up, she and her sisters were known as the Grady Girls. All of the great girls were strong women, they were women of substance, and you should consider that they were born between the 20s and the 40s. They all went to college. Almost all of them got at least a bachelor's degree, but most of them also got master's degrees. You consider this is during the time of the Depression. They grew up on a farm and they were just amazing women, strong-willed, determined to do what they saw needed to be done. And I thought about it.

Speaker 1:

My mother was a community activist. She was a teacher. She was a teacher at heart. Forever, even probably to her last day she was still teaching us stuff, but she was one who would make a decision and not back down. One who would make a decision to not back down. She ran for school board here in Raleigh before the Wake County School and the Raleigh City School Boards merged and she told me at one point when I was older that when she made the decision to run for school board she was asked not to by some of the Black men in town because another gentleman who was a friend of hers was running for the school board and they wanted to be sure that she was elected and she decided not to follow through with what they wanted and she ran anyway. They both won with what they wanted and she ran anyway. They both won. And when she finally came off the board it was 25 years before there was another two African-Americans on the school board here in Wake County and I was so proud of her. I remember standing at the elementary school. I remember standing at the elementary school passing out pamphlets asking people to vote for her.

Speaker 1:

I remember being an embarrassed proud the year I graduated from high school because she was on the school board at the time and during that period of time, school board members from the city, would you know, go to different graduation ceremonies, and she just had to be at mine, had to get up and give me a hug and you know, when you're that age, you're like I don't want my mama to get up and do stuff. But nevertheless, I learned from her. I learned to be strong, to not give in or give up, to be willing to fight for things that needed to be fought for, to be willing to say the things that needed to be said, to take a stand if I needed to take a stand, to be quiet when I needed to be quiet, which is hard to do sometimes, yes, but I wanted to honor her and Raleigh, the city of Raleigh, has a program Well, the city of Raleigh doesn't have it, but it's a program called the Raleigh Hall of Fame, and people are inducted into the Hall of Fame after an application process, and so the year after she died, I wondered why she'd never been made part of the Hall of Fame, and so I decided. One of the other things that I learned growing up was if you want something done, you just do it. So I nominated her for the Hall of Fame, the Raleigh Hall of Fame, and she was accepted and inducted into that the year after she died and inducted into that the year after she died, and I really wished I had done something earlier so that she could have been honored and seen it.

Speaker 1:

I realized that there were so many women, so many Black women in particular, who had done things that were important at the same time that she was doing them, and maybe even before. I knew before we celebrate things that young Black women are doing today, but we don't necessarily celebrate things that older women are doing. And so I decided I wanted to be sure that she and her friends were honored. And so I came up with this woman of substance idea and I just created a logo and a t-shirt, but I didn't really do anything with it. And the more I researched history and what Blacks have done in history in America, the more I began to realize how many Black women have done things and gotten no recognition unless they're at the national level Black women who need to be honored for what they have done and how they have undergirded society and helped to build this country that we live in.

Speaker 1:

And so I made the decision last year that I was going to tell somebody that I wanted to do this and you know, sometimes you have an idea in your head and that's where it lives, is in your head, and if you don't open your mouth it doesn't become real. And so I made the decision that I wanted to host an event. I thought it would just be, you know, a little reception, maybe honor 10 or 12 women. And my business coach said to me, why do you keep focusing on this? And I was like because it's something I have to do, it's something I really have to do. And so finally she said, well then, don't keep it small. You know, if you're going to do it, do it big enough to make a splash, make a difference. So I thought about that and I said okay.

Speaker 1:

And I started to think about Oprah's Legends Ball, when she had said she had forgotten to invite Cecily Tyson for her. I believe it was her 50th birthday and so she was going to invite her for lunch. And then she started thinking of other Black women that she considered had made the way possible for her to do the things that she had done. And so it began to grow and she considered herself a young'un compared to them. So she had legends and young'uns to come together for a big luncheon and then a big dinner dance and then a Sunday gospel brunch at her estate in California, and I always thought that that was so important that she was willing, as known as she was, to honor these other women who had come, who had made strides and made open pathways for her, and so this is what I really decided I wanted to do, and so April 25th of this year 2025, would have been my mother's 95th birthday, was she still living, and so I am going to host a dinner event in her honor. This is called Woman of Substance, strong and Beautiful. But I'm not just honoring my mother, I'm honoring women. Probably about 250 women I thought it was 200, but I went back and looked at my numbers yesterday so probably about 200 women from the late 1800s forward and young women. So there are about 200 legends and about 50 young'uns who have been amazing women and probably have only gotten notice in their obituaries if that for the things that they have done throughout the Raleigh area and Raleigh, just the city of Raleigh.

Speaker 1:

I'm not doing the county, I'm not doing the region. I'm not doing the region because it amazed me when I began to realize how much support Black women have put into our communities, into not just our schools, into organizations. I was researching my grandmother because, you know, I never knew her to be anything other than grandma. I never knew her to be anything other than grandma, and I put her name in in searching in newspapers and started to find out about organizations she had been involved with, how she had been involved with the Girl Scouts, how different women that I knew around me growing up had done things that they didn't talk about. Or if they did talk about them, I was a kid and I didn't care.

Speaker 1:

And I just want to give honor and homage and respect to Black women who have been amazing in the things that they have done and haven't gotten any credit for it. And so I want to invite you to look around you in your community, in your church, in your place of worship, in your school, whether it's your college or your high school or your wherever. Look and see who the women were, who've undergirded, who have supported the men and the children and other women who have helped to start programs and organizations that would do things in the community that without them we would be a sadder place to live, and give them homage and give them homage. Give them respect. If they're alive, tell them thank you. If they're not, find a way to write that down, because it's the things that aren't written down that we don't know about. It's the history that was written from the point of view of white men and their money that left out a lot of the things that everybody else in the country did.

Speaker 1:

Make sure that you are honoring and respecting those women who have been doing things around you that you really hadn't thought about, that you hadn't thought about how they took time out of their schedules. They took time out of cooking and cleaning and taking care of your children and their children and other people's children. That took time out of their teaching schedules to make sure that students who didn't have money to bring supplies to school had them. That were involved in your worship ceremonies or your Sunday school or your Bible study. That worked alongside their husbands in their business and the husband got all of the credit for the business and they didn't Do those things. Respect them. Don't be quiet about that anymore. I know I am not going to do that.

Speaker 1:

As part of this, I am writing a book just about these women, because these are pieces of history that need to be written down somewhere where it is important for others to be able to read and to take courage to take inspiration from things that black women have done, that they haven't been recognized for, and so I just want to encourage you today, if you're in the Raleigh area, when you hear that the tickets are for sale for the dinner, get one, because the book that I write will be a gift for those people who are at the dinner. It will be part of the celebration of these Black women who were quiet, but they did things anyway, and some of them are gone, and so we want to encourage our young people, our young men and our young women to be able and willing to honor those who have done for them, around them, behind them, unbeknownst to them. We want to be quiet. No more You've been listening to Quiet no More, where I share my journey, so you can be quiet.