I Write Because She Couldn't

Donna Ladd was in the third grade when her mother sat her down and said the words she'd never forget: "I can't read or write. I'm gonna need you to help me do my business." 

In this episode, award-winning journalist and Mississippi Free Press co-founder Donna Ladd talks about her mother, Katie May Coates Ladd, a woman kept home from school to cook for field hands, married at fourteen in the middle of a road so no one could stop it, and yet one of the sharpest, funniest, most clear-eyed people Donna has ever known. "I have deep respect for smart people stuck in uneducated bodies," Donna says. "My mother was an example of that."

We talk about shame and secrecy, about a mother who unlearned a lifetime of casual racism when her daughter asked her to, about beehive hairdos, and how home calls us back. 

Visit https://adaughtersinheritance.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

She sits me down and she says that she needed to tell me something. Now I'm in the third grade, y'all, you know, and she's like, I I I just want you to know that I can't read or read or write. And I'm looking at her like, what? You know? And she said, and so, and I'll never forget this. She said, She said, so I'm gonna need you to help me do my business. Like I always say that, you know, I write because my mother couldn't, and I just really mean that.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Hello everyone, and welcome to A Daughter's Inheritance. I'm your host, Susan Seal, and I'm happy that you are coming along with us today. So I was recently at a national conference in Boston, and I had several people that came up to me and said, I'm enjoying your podcast. Well, I I immediately thought that it was a podcast we do at work because this was a conference on online education, continuing education, adult learners, and our podcast at work is on higher ebb. But after they said, I'm enjoying your podcast, they started telling me about their mother. And I was like, oh, that that one. So I just wanted to say I appreciate uh all of you listening wherever you are and for sharing your favorite episodes. And I think today I'm looking forward to it and think it might be one of your favorite episodes, and I think you're gonna find it uh fascinating. My guest today is Donna Ladd, and she is co-founder and editor of the statewide Mississippi Free Press and the Jackson Free Press, and is the director and founder of the Mississippi Youth Media Project. And really she's just a a big deal in terms of investigative journalism in the state of Mississippi. So we'll get into some of her areas uh as we talk. But Donna, welcome. Thank you for joining me today. Oh thank you. I'm really happy to be here. So I I was listening to a podcast the other day that you did in Chicago, and it was about political issues and how many Americans don't know a lot about our American history. And that is exacerbating some of our issues uh today. But our focus today is gonna be a little bit different. We're gonna talk about your mother. And uh I met you a couple of years ago, I think now, at the Starfall Rotary Club. And you I was fascinated right then by your overall story, but also about your mother and our connection to Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Because not only are we both from Philadelphia, but we grew up on the same road. Wow. So did your mother grow up on the fork, did she grow up in the fork community as well, or did she move from somewhere else?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

No, she uh she and my dad really kind of you know separately obviously grew up in Dixon. Okay. Um, in fact, I always say, I don't know if I would actually call it this, but when I get around to writing a memoir, which I uh plan to do at some point, I I want to name it Dixon because it, you know, it's such a uh complicated, interesting place down there. But yeah, when my people came into Mississippi most directly from Alabama, they came into that Dixon area and then down around Sebastopol.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Neither for for those people that aren't from around here, uh neither of those are very far from from Philadelphia. No, they're not. It's small area, that's for sure. Yeah, my my grandmother was from Kemper County in Decay, so uh not far away either. What was her relationship like with her parents? What was her younger years like growing up?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Well, you know, my mother was the only daughter of several uh and had several brothers, I think five. And you know, she she was illiterate, as you know, but she also came from a literate family and parents. And you know, my grandfather and her name was Coates. So my grandpa Coates, whom I never met, he died when I was very young, I think, didn't really believe in education. And a lot of people, a lot of sharecroppers, a lot of uh, you know, uh of people of that time didn't, my other grandfather, my dad's dad didn't really believe in education either. Uh, but you know, they would let the boys go to school. So those big one room Dixon school back down where they were, they'd let the boys go, sometimes through third grade, if if that, so that they learn to read and write enough or do figures, as they called it, so that they could function, you know, they could help with whatever the business was, you know, if it was just selling extra cotton, then they could add it up.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

They needed to know that just for what they were doing. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Just those, the just the sheer basics, right? But with girls, that wasn't always the case. And so with my grandpa, you know, he kept my mother home from school and didn't let her go to, she never went to school a day in her life until literacy classes, which is really what my guardian piece is about that I did about my mother. But he we basically kept her home to cook. She was a really good cook, and maybe this is why, but she she cooked for the people in working in the fields. And I think that was a common thing for girls at the time, right? And then my grandfather, by all you know, stories that I've heard, was probably abusive and very difficult. So my mother, kind of long story short, but she ended up uh marrying my dad when she was 14 or 15, I think it was, uh, 14, 15, uh, in the middle of a road at frog level, which you believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I I I loved it. I want a sign that says frog level because you know that's in many ways that's where I descend from is frog level, not fork road. But anyway, uh she told me later on, she got married in the middle of the road so that nobody could stop them. I don't know if that's really true, but I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I don't think she'd have lied about the middle of the road part. But anyway, so kind of came out from her over the years because I came along later. You know, my brothers were 16 and 20 when uh when I was born. And so I I was different for her, you know, and so we were we were close and we were friends, and you know, she she taught to me a lot and and she would tell me how difficult it was, and she was really smart. I I have deep respect for smart people stuck in uneducated bodies, as I've often called it, and because my mother was such an example of that. And you know, and my my father, and I've written about that too, ended up being fairly alcoholic and was pretty abusive to her as well. You know, she had a she had kind of a tough life, but it started with her lack of education, yeah, and that's what made it the hardest. What was her mother like? Her mother was I liked my coats. I knew her when she was older, you know, she was kind of bouncing from from from house to house. I mean, I never knew her young. I do not remember what she looked like before she had a her whole ritual of putting her hair up and her butt bun at the back. And I mean, I was just fascinated by every piece of this. And she was kind of gruff, you know, and uh I it Mama Coates and I I really got along well. And uh I always kind of thought she was badass, considering that she was she was old. I think she would tell people that she had been 60 for over 20 years or something, you know, it was that kind of thing. But and she, you know, she was an orphan and and she's I I don't know enough about her family as a result of that. I've I've been teasing around with this idea that she might have been on the orphan train some years ago. Speaking of history, I've never quite proven that, but that's something that had kind of passed by my radar. So I don't know much about her family life, but she uh she and my mother were close. Now, by the time I really knew her, she was bouncing around between my my mother, as the only daughter had all these brothers, and so and Jackson and various places I live in Jackson now. So she was bouncing around, and so I knew her mostly, and she had this big shiff a robe, as they called them. Then do you know what that is? The big chest of drawers and the whole thing, and all her little cubbyholes. I so wish I still had that thing. We'd all have to load up and move to the next place, and and in some ways I'm very much like her in that with my stuff, but we do get connected to things. I am we doing settlement, don't even get me started about me, but you know, I never saw her inner self very much, I think is one way to put it because she was older, but she was very she had her rituals, which I'm kind of that way too, and you know, and I think thinking back now, I think she was trying to control her environment however she could after a probably a very difficult life. And but she liked us best, so she always wanted to stay with us.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yeah, so you were saying that she she'd been 60 for a long time. It's interesting looking back at some of those old pictures, and you know, yeah, like my grand great-grandmother, I'll look at that and it's like, well, you know, she must have been, you know, 60 or 70 or whatever, and she'd be like 40.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

I mean, they just oh I know they they they aged fast in that sense, and they a lot of them had had hard lives. I mean, that was certainly the case with they earned with my mother and grandmother, yeah. Working in feels and hunched over and you know, all of those things, and you know, just for in hot sun and picking cotton and all these things that they did. I mean, you know, they they went through a lot. And my mother had had breast cancer when she was young, and you know, just they had to be very strong to get through it all.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

You were talking about your mother getting married at 14. We have, and also talking about being sentimental, I have um my great-grandmother, she got married at 16. And we have the little note that her father wrote to, I guess, the Justice of the Peace that said, uh, Sadie is my daughter, and she's 16, and it's okay for her to get married.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Well, the dads were often giving the girls away in many ways, you know. I mean, it's just true, and even even in poorer families, maybe especially in some cases, you know. And anyway, it's yeah, I've spent a lot of time on my genealogy, and there's there's a lot up in there when you really face it, you know, head on.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Yeah, I well, I was talking to somebody the other day uh who said, you know, don't don't do your genealogy unless you've got tough skin and you can handle them because you're gonna find some things. Especially when you're from the deep south and you're white.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

And I encourage people to go in with both eyes open and you'll learn a lot. But yeah, yeah, there's yeah, there's a lot up in there.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

So but the big thing, and you've you've mentioned it, your mother was illiterate, and you make your living writing. As we mentioned, founder and editor of the Mississippi Free Press, journalist? How did that come about? I mean, how did you get from being raised in uh because your father was slightly literate, I think. Uh only slightly, but yeah. And he died when you were in third grade, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Third grade, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Uh so how do you and her and and their parents were illiterate. So how did that happen that you are uh on the opposite end of that, really?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Um to me at this point in my life, I think it's kind of a two-prong answer. One is that I could not have had a mother who valued education more than my mother because she didn't have it. And so in my case, just the how much she valued it and the things that she would do to ensure that I could afford things to go to school and to, you know, and how passionate she was about that was it was certainly a big part of it. And then, and then a kind of a a direct thing was that when I didn't really know it because she kind of faked her way through it. She had uh I didn't know it until I was in the third grade, but she'd faked her way through it. So I would see her looking at magazines or looking up a book. I mean, she was ashamed that she couldn't, which was one of the difficult things. But so she faked her way and she had she had memorized how to write her name because remember, she's really intelligent, which you know, and so she she could fake her way through things, but she couldn't fake her way through everything. And so after my father died when I was in the second grade, it was not long after that at all, like the start of the school year in the third grade, and I came home from Neshoba Central, and I was all excited because we wrote cursive. And that's when she sat me down, and she's like, sit down, I need to talk to you. And I'm in the third grade, right? I'm like, what's happening? And uh so she she sits me down and she says that she needed to tell me something. Now I'm in the third grade, y'all, you know, and she's like, I I I just want you to know that I can't read and read or write. And I'm looking at her like, what, you know, and she said, and so, and I'll never forget this. And she said, she said, so I'm gonna need you to help me do my business. And and because my dad had, and that little bit that he could do, and he was smart too. So I expect, even though I don't have enough memory of it, that he had taught himself to do more than he had learned in school, you know, not trust me, wasn't sitting around reading novels, or we didn't have many books around when I was a kid, you know, a little kid. So that's what she said. And so I was like, okay, I had no idea what do my business meant, you know. So I'm like, what? So she did. I mean, she's you know, I learned to write checks. She would come to me kind of secretly and get me to read things to her as I was able to and just do stuff. That's just the way it became. And we had these little code things where if somebody handed her something to read, I would grab it like I was precocious, which I kind of was, but you know, which came first, I don't know. But um and I would grab it and start reading it to her, you know, reading it out loud, you know, and or things like that would happen. And so it it was just it was our secret, you know, because she was so ashamed of it. I've I think I've written any number of times that I kind of became her eyes and her somewhat she was smart, but I was I was, you know, I could help her get things done. And so I think I think it came from that, right? And then I also because she did want me, like she bought somebody came selling encyclopedias, so she bought me encyclopedias. Read them. Like, okay, yeah, yeah, with the white well with the white ones and the blue ones, the white ones with the greens, yeah. She couldn't afford both of them either, I'm telling you. And then my brother, one of my brothers who was remember 16 years older than me, was the first person. I he may have been the first cousin to go to to college. I I can't swear that, but he would come home and bring me books. So I can't take away from Ken the immense influence that it helped that he and then he got married to my sister-in-law, Sheila, who's still one of my favorite people in the world. And they would bring me books. And, you know, I people wanted me to to be educated, you know, and to read. And I was so curious. And so it just it it just grew from there. I think some of it was that maturity that you're that's forced on you in a way, because you have to do these things and keep the secret. So I became, I think it became quite shifty, which I think is, you know, I use to my advantage to this day. But um, yeah, so I think I think that's where it came from. And then I was always mentor to mentor, people who were, you know, helping me. You know, one of the biggest challenges was, and my mother, God, when she did her literacy test, she she actually she told me something, and when she was actually learning to read and write in her 60s before she died, she she said to me that she was really upset. She got it into a depression, and she said to me when I I come home, I was living away, and and she said, I didn't know how much I didn't know. And that to that that is one of the most heartbreaking things that it ever could be said that explains illiteracy, I think, because she just didn't know how much she didn't know, and other people were helping me transcend that.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

You were talking about how smart that she was, and I've I've said that about uh my grandfather. He had an eighth-grade education, which you know wasn't bad. I have his diploma again, keep keep all the things, and I also have he was valedictorian of his eighth grade class, and so I have his little speech, and I think it would rival a lot of your you know high school speeches today. But he was with only an eighth-grade education. I always said he was one of the smartest uh men that I knew, and he had the emotional intelligence, you know, he he worked well with people, he worked for the city and in Philadelphia, he farmed and he was just smart, and I learned a lot of things from him, and so similar, I think, to kind of what you're saying about your mom.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Oh well, that's it. I mean, I learned from a very young age that education and being intelligent are are are two different things, and and so as a result of that, I think that I don't see the barriers sometimes that some other people can see. Now I believe heartily, you know, wholeheartedly in education, and so did she. We had relatives around us who didn't care about education, you know, that thought it was a bad thing. You get ideas in your head and all this stuff. We st we still have those those things today. Oh God, they're growing, I think. But right, and exactly. I learned that early, and that's the thing. It's like intelligence, you know, and a lot of times intelligence, if people are curious and they think about things and they're encouraged to do that. I just think the the the sky's the limit, right? And I always said, like I always say that, you know, I write because my mother couldn't, and I just really mean that because it meant so much to her that I I needed to be able to do that and to help other people do that, you know, as a result of it as an adult and as a now a CEO hires people and an editor and all these other things. I am known for finding people with more potential than education, you know, and uh or quote unquote quality of education or whatever it is, because I really believe that that if you you figure out how to engage people and what they really care about and to expose them to things, then and that's what she taught me. That's the thing. Like she she pushed me out into the world and when she could have really used me at home.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Right. Well, you know there was um conference I was at, it's been a long time ago, and they were talking about poverty and education and how sometimes we assume you know, kids in elementary school, well, they can't learn, they're struggling with math. And this lady who had worked in in that area for a long time, she says, and they're treated like they're dumb. They're not dumb, they don't know how to do the math in the way that you're talking to them about it. But if you ask that kid to figure out how much money they have to spend on the light bill as opposed to the water bill, yeah, they can do that math because they're the ones running the household in fourth grade. Uh so it's just it's not that they're dumb, it's just the learning has to match where they are.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Well, and the expectations. And I think that's what uh, you know, that whole that old political phrase, big bigotry of low expectations, you know, I don't appreciate the the context that originated in. However, there's truth in the words, you know, that there is this real bigotry of low expectations that we have for others, and then that the psychology of that, I think, you know, if people don't believe that they can do certain things, like you know, I I run a youth media program, uh journalism program and have now for 10 years, and some remarkable work comes out of that program and it surprises people, you know. It's like, you know, they are winning, they lat, you know, they win awards against um, you know, public school kids. I mean, it's a real mix of kids. I mean, some of them come from more privileged backgrounds than others, but we believe they can do the quality of work that they do and that we expect, and that they can take being edited and doing rewrites and all the things that you have to do to become a great writer. And they do. And so it's kind of the same thing, is the reason I bring that up is that they we just we expect too little and then we we make assumptions about people's backgrounds. I mean we do it in journalism as an industry where we don't have nearly enough people who understand backgrounds like mine in more difficult circumstances than mine, right? And and they they just assume what a good education looks like. You know, there are worlds that live in me, and I can I can be in a lot of different environments, but I am who I am. And I, you know, I tried to get rid of my southern accent years ago, you know, when I was younger, I was so mad at the South. That's just a whole nother conversation, uh, partially because of our hometown, let's just be honest. And part of when I'm when I came back, you know, after 18 years, I was coming back. I came back and I it's almost like I reclaimed my heritage by moving back and doing what I do here. And it all stems from that whole, I don't know, everything that has ever happened to me and my mother and my grandmother are in me, you know, or in who I am now.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Maya Angelo said that she disagrees with Thomas Wolfe's sentiment that you can't go home again. Um she says that it never leaves you. That home the home goes with you. And then in the that the newest uh it a fairly new book, Ken. Yeah, I haven't read it, but I know that she talks about how the the soil of your home follows you uh and it draws you back. Do you do you find that is is true that it that home kind of goes with you? Has it done that for you?

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yeah, oh absolutely. And I think like I I was kind of referring to kind of trying to leave it because I was mad at it and you know, for all for good reason, let's just be honest. But and and not just not just around race and um but also around being a woman, you know, and the ex the low expectations of what we can and should do. And so, you know, when I left the day after Mississippi State swearing I was never coming back, I really meant it. And then, you know, long, you know, 18 years later, I go to Columbia, I get my master's, I'm writing about Mississippi, coming back here to do reporting. Then I suddenly I have, you know, I like to say the homing device went off in my head. And I kind of mean it. And it's like, I I do, and I actually think that a lesson I've learned is that we should let that in and we should let that breathe and be part of us. And I understand the difficulty of it when you have to sometimes you have to leave to understand that better because it's too close here. And I and so I think that happened to me, and I know it happens to a lot of other people, where for one thing, you get out there and you find out it's not all that much better, even though people pretend it is. You know, they just they just don't talk about their stuff and they talk about our stuff. And I don't say that to downplay our stuff, it's just true, and a lot of my work revolves around that. In fact, I'm writing a book that's somewhat about around some of those things now, but but yes, it's in you, and it's like it's who you are. And now, as a writer and a writing teacher, editor, etc., what I teach to people is that all of that is when you talk about voice, you know, the last thing it you ever should be doing as when you're trying to develop develop a writing voice is to sound like somebody else, right? It's like you you you are everything that has happened to you and absorbed, and if you allow that to be the case, then if that is what drives what you create and what and how you look at the world. I mean, the best things I write are through fully my own lens as a Mississippi woman who came from illiterate parents, who ran and came back, and all this stuff, all the stuff, and the racism that happened around me, and how I responded to it, and how my mother responded to it, all of those things, they are my voice, even if I'm not writing about those things. And so, yes, we have to uh to be truly authentic people and and writers and creators, I think we have to fully allow ourselves to be everything that we are, the sum of our history, basically.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

Talking about going home, I I went to Philadelphia this past weekend. Uh, because we still we still have uh my mom's house, property, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

And uh, and I go back regularly, and I went up to the cemetery, uh Henry's Chapel, uh cemetery, and I walked around and I don't know if you can see that. Oh, you found my mama's grave. But I found your and that's your dad also right in your mom, yeah. In my dad. Uh your mom and dad's grave there. Uh so our mothers are buried in the same cemetery, but I I walked around a little bit. That's crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Uh yeah, yeah. That's uh, and like I said, we didn't, we all the lads, you know, my my dad and his brothers, somehow lads took over foreground their lads and tangles and hollies. Yeah, yeah. That we were one of the uh, you know, the the big family, so to speak. Yeah. Uh although now I've realized a lot of very wealthy people have kind of uh it's it's kind of remade back back in there in ways that I I didn't quite recognize it. But but yeah, my sister-in-law still lives down there. Uh, I was just there a few days ago.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

We're talking about race stuff, and and one thing that surprised me a little bit is your mother influenced not just you becoming a a writer, but she also influenced your focus with the the racial and inequities. Yeah, tell me a little bit about that, because that uh doesn't fit the stereotype, particularly for that time in that place.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

No, and no, that's right. And and I influenced her too. And so I'll kind of you know, I'll mention that as well, which you probably read. But uh, you know, my mother was deeply, deeply compassionate and deeply she was very human. You know, we always said that, you know, sh well, I think she always said she never met a stranger, which is true, and it's it's it's true for me if I'm not like hiding out from people, and uh, and so she knew all sorts of people. She worked at the Guerin factory and you know, and she was in love with Charlie Pride. I'd marry that man, you know, and that was a shocking thing to say back in the 60s and so and 70s. The thing that she said to me, like when I was very young, she would say to me, Nobody's better than anybody else. And she always remember, nobody's better than anybody else. And that's somebody telling you that everybody's equal, you know, and that the whole arc of my work has been pretty much that, right? And this, you know, this book, if I never push it out the door, is going to be largely about that as well, and not just in the south. But she really cared about people, right? Now, she was also growing up in an environment, I've written about this, it's no no secret, where she used the N-word, right? And I the simplistic way to look at that would be well, A, first, horrible, and I'll get to that in a minute. But the simplistic way of looking at that would looking at that is like, well, that people would say, oh, well, your mother used the N-word, she was racist. And the truth is, I know a lot about racism at this point because it's one of my specialties. And she's one of the least racist paper people I know because she didn't really, she she honestly believed everybody was equal. That was the language that the people uneducated and others around her were it was a it was a descriptor. I'm not excusing it at all. So I don't want anybody to take the it that way. In fact, I sat her down when I was, I'm guessing fifth grade from my memory, but don't know. And I said you knew it all by then, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

So you were ready.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Well, I was I was figuring it out. And I said, Mama, you're gonna have to stop using that word. Uh-huh. And she never used it again.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

You know, because that is an ugly word. And it, you know, anyway, and I probably said exactly that. That's an ugly word, and you can't say it anymore. And it was almost like she immediately understood that, right? And and because she got it. And so I'm not going to I tell that story, I don't have to tell that part, right?

unknown 30:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

You know, I tell that story to say people can change, but it's not just about sometimes it's changing the way they communicate or changing the way that they were taught, but what's underneath them is what it really matters. And so they need people to help bring that out of them. And so my interest, it really started. I mean, there's a story, I'd never for I'd never forget it, but I don't know exactly when it happened. I was very young, and we were watching some movie that had a a TV thing or something, and it was, it might have been a western, and they were trying to lynch a black man, and I lost it. I mean, I was just, I I just, you know, I ran back and I was like, I, you know, it's maybe the closest I've ever come to a real panic attack. I mean, I was just like, I couldn't, my mother was washing my face with a washcloth, and I'm like, I can't believe. And so it was kind of like I look back through my whole young life and and I remember just hating the racism around me. You know, it was like the more I was aware, I couldn't, and for me, it was logic, it was illogical. It's like, how can people think that people of a that diff have a different skin tone somehow are inferior never made sense? And I was right, and all this actual science supports that, and and you know, as I learned over time, but it was like it made no sense. And then the hateful things I would hear, and I'm and I know I don't remember it all. You know, my some of my own uncles, God bless them, call me an in-lover as a kid because I would say just anything that wasn't, you know, racist or whatever. Or or I would I would say, or maybe I said, Oh, you shouldn't say that, or whatever it was. And that just like made me madder, you know. It's like I'd like stop it. It's just and I so I was so mad about it. And then I, you know, long story short, I I didn't know about the murders that from the civil rights murder murders until I was 14, you know, that happened when I was three, and I was really mad about that because nobody had taught me. And so it just became this the snowball effect of what I was really interested in. And I I think it goes back to her ultimately, it's because it's this how wrong racism is, but also how wrong it is for people. You can hold two thoughts at once. I think my I learned that, right? Two thoughts at once, and it's it's so wrong, and it's also wrong for other people in other places to dump it all on other places. And and I do not say that, and anybody's read my writing knows that I am not going easy on Mississippi or our hometown at all. But why it's still with us is because there's this naivete across the nation about what it really looks like everywhere. And so that's what I learned over time. But I think it was the way she helped me think. I I don't know how else to put it, that she helped me think, and then she models somebody who who would change.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

I mean, imagine that in today's world. So one of my favorite TED talks is called The Danger of a Single Story. I think I saw it's been around for a while. It's better, it's old. It's like I don't know, I don't remember. Yeah, that's what I thought. One of the things that she says that so sticks with me is the problem with stereotypes is not that they're untrue, it's that they're incomplete. No, yeah. I mean, you think about stereotypes of Mississippi, and we all know people that would fit them, you know, absolutely, yeah, but they're incomplete. And I think, you know, your mom, a country illiterate woman from Philadelphia, probably fit some of the things that people would think about that, but it's totally incomplete because what they didn't know was the things that you're talking about. That that's not the whole story.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

And then the other thing is that nobody ever probably ever said, Don't say that. Yeah.

unknown 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

You know, and in some ways, you know, it's just like to challenge something that people grew up with. You know, people don't a lot of people don't like that. Well, I, you know, my career is based on do doing that. Yeah, when you know better, do better. Yeah. And and she model, she modeled that for me, you know, it's like pushing me out there, and then I would come home and tell her things and she would learn from them. That one thing wasn't the only one. But yeah, no, that's that's absolutely true.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Here's a real important thing I want to ask you about. Okay. The hair. She a picture I saw, I saw a picture of of the two of you that looked something similar to this, and it was probably around the same time of you standing by your mom. Now, my mother's hair is not as tall, but if you look at this picture back here, she as she got older, it got higher. But that one picture, your mom's it was it was high. My mom could rock a beehive.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

And but here's here's the rest of the story. I I don't know if you know this because I don't know if I've written this part or not. Who knows? She wore those hair pieces, right? I don't know if your mother did that, but they would build that she'd go to the beauty shop.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

Yeah, oh yeah, once a week.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

They build those hair pieces in there, and so that's why it kept it, kept this, and she dyed her hair until I mean probably sometime around my age. Uh she dyed it jet black, you know. I mean, she actually had great style when I actually think about it, you know. But so she'd have that hair piece up in there, and that hair piece looked like a spider if you saw it lying around, look like a big old spider. And so she would do that, and then by the way, my mother, my mother was actually one of the funniest people I've ever known. And so I think I also got my particular sense of humor from her, but she would she would try to keep it in place at night because she you had to sleep on those things because you didn't go back to the beauty shop for another week, right? She wore these big, she had these big panties, and uh so she would put a clean pair over her uh beehive at night and like pin it up and stuff, and that's what would like kind of keep her beehive in place, and then um it was and I have some great pictures of her wearing panties on her beehive, but yeah, I mean she was she was she was she really didn't know. Yeah, that hair was important.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

My I you did not mess with that. You that was oh my god. Uh they used to say the higher the hair, the closer to God. That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

And she she had it. But I tell you, some of those I couldn't go to the beauty shop with her very much though, because some of the things as some of those women would say, you know, I just I was like, okay, I'm not gonna go to the beauty shop, Mama. You go ahead and go because you know I'm gonna I'm gonna hit somebody. I know you gotta get your hair did, but you know, uh I cannot deal with these women.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Now, was she religious at all?

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Not well, that's a good question. She uh not until later in life. And we didn't talk about it much early early on, and I was never forced to go to church. I kind of decided to for a little bit while I was a teenager until at Good Hope Baptist Church, and then all this racist sexist stuff happened, and I was accused of trying to pick up an old deacon, and I'm like, I am so out of here. I'm a kid, I'm like 14. I would call her now. I I would call her kind of like I consider myself, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. And I think that that was probably true for her too. Even in thinking about it, she was actually quite mindful, which she never would have known what that, you know, really meant. I think I think later in her life, she started going to uh a church there at Williamsville. And and I think it I think she went because it was important for her to prepare for for dying at some point. And I think she always thought she died at 65, and I'm about to turn 65. And I think she thought it was, you know, a lot of health issues in my whole family. So I I think some of it was about that, you know, it was about that kind of and and I don't judge that at all. I mean, my take on my mother is that she didn't really, you know, she she was a better person than most people I knew who went to church when I was growing up there. I can tell you that. I have a feeling you know what I'm talking about. But so it wasn't, I was never I never had religion thrust on me. Like like never. So yeah, it wasn't a big, big part of her life until later.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

I was on a a panel talking about women in leadership, and one of the things we talked about was imposter syndrome. And they asked how many women in there had imposter syndrome. And pretty much everybody in that room except for one woman raised their hand. Uh and she's like, why? Why would you you know, y'all are all accomplished? Why would you have imposter syndrome? Have did have you ever experienced that?

SPEAKER_01 40:16

That's a good question. Nobody's ever asked me that. Um Yeah, I would I I don't think I would have called it imposter syndrome, but I think so, yeah. I think when I left when I left Mississippi, I probably went through some things around that could be called that in the sense of just kind of having the confidence early on to kind of believe I could do certain things. Now I think that part of what I was facing that kind of brought out the imposter syndrome was there was so much BS stereotypes about people from Mississippi and who talked like I did. You know, I was working very hard then to get rid of my southern accent, and I actually largely did. And now I'm just got this accent that's all kind of, you know, it's everything from New York, you know, I talk New York Yiddish words to depends on who I'm talking to and all that. My mother had a lot of pride, and that got her through, I think. And I think I picked up on some of that and to, and at points to a detrimental degree where I would hesitate to put myself out there sometimes early on because I did not want to be condescended to or treated in like I was lesser as a as a you know, a white woman from the South, I could be, and I have been. And I mean, and I still am some now, but I don't, I don't, you know, now I know how to, you know, have a force field and I know how to reject it. So I think that it was, I never really thought of it as imposter syndrome, but I expect now that it was in a way because I wasn't good enough. And I get frustrated even to today at the the barriers that are put up for women who are really good at what we do. Like I am. I'm really at this point, I don't have the imposter. No, I don't have that anymore. Early lack of confidence about being able to kind of be in those other places and spaces and in other states. And then in the Ivy League, I actually went through a kind of a when I got my master's degree in journalism. I I had there was this one class that quite literally sent me back to Mississippi in the sense of it. I kind of went to therapy to deal with the way this man dealt with me. As a result of that, I figured out that I actually wanted to come back to Mississippi. It was not running. So it was a good thing. So it wasn't like I was running from that, you know, that situation. It wasn't that at all, but it was like through just talking it out with this fantastic art therapist woman that, you know, it kind of lit this thing into me to kind of come back to Mississippi and do what I was really good at. And that's really what sent me back. So it's kind of the reason I say that in that little complicated arc there is that women still go through so much. It's almost like even if we don't feel like we are imposters, it's thrust on us that other people think we are. To me, that at this point in my career, that pisses me off because it's not necessary, or they play games with you. Let's go back to it. This is how my mother inspires me because it's like if she could do what she did, then I I have really learned to turn lemons into lemonade. And that's what I get a message that I would like to send to women. It won't always be fair. Right. And we gotta, we gotta fight that. We gotta fight that on behalf of younger women because they just go through the same cycles.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

So as we wrap up, I want to ask you this question. As a journalist, if you were sitting down with your mother today and interviewing her, what would you want to know what would you want to ask her and know about that you don't already know about her?

SPEAKER_01 44:19

Um Well, the honest answer, I mean, what pops into my head is I would want I think I would want to know more about the full range of abuse that she faced, including at the hands of my father. Because I think, you know, I knew that he had cheated on her and some other things, you know. And I I but it took it was past her death and it took an aunt who was actually on her deathbed who told me some things about, you know, how bad it really was. And I think she protected me from that even after he died. You know, and so I think I would want to know more about that, you know, and how not just what happened, but how she got through that. You know? Yeah. I think that's what I would want to know.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

I don't think we've mentioned her name yet.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

It was Katie May, well, Coates was her uh was her maiden name, and then Ladd, and then she had remarried my stepfather later in life, um, who she loved dearly. He was an alcoholic, and so there were there's a whole another round of problems around that. Um, and he loved her dearly, and he loved me dearly. Katie May, that's a that's a good Mississippi name. Yeah, and I was Donner Kay. And what's funny is I use that now in social media. I outlawed my family calling me because they'd all call me Donna K. I mean, I'd get Christmas cards from Ant in uh Florida addressed to Katie May and Donna K. And I'm like, would you people stop it? And so I hated it for so long.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Yeah, Donna, Donner with an R, right? We had Yeah, yeah, like the reindeer, like the reindeer. My cousin, my first cousin is Linda, and but my mother called her Linder. We actually talked about that in the first episode. Yeah, it was yeah, it was Linder, Linder this and Linder that.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Linder, always Linder. I mean, my mother's I'm still deciphering. It was always Osh potatoes, and I never I guess that was Irish, but Irish, but anyway, just the words. Oh, I tell Todd, my partner, who never got to the privilege of meeting my mother, but you know, the the the the way she would talk and her language was just, I wish I, you know, I don't even think I have a recording. Um, because you know, it was then and we didn't have recordings like we do now. Yeah, she and she was so funny. I that's the thing I want to just end this with. I mean, she was just the funniest person, and she loved life despite it all. And there's really no better message than that, I think, you know, to just try to squeeze everything you can. That's what I meant that she was mindful, you know, like she tried to live in the moment and she was a great cook and never met a stranger. She was a character, you know, not just the panties on the beehive. I mean, there are all kinds of things that she did. Yeah, I miss her every day.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Well, thank you for being here today. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Thank you. This is really fun to get to talk about my mother for an hour is not something that happens very often.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Well, I I certainly appreciate it. And listeners, uh thank you for joining us today. Uh, every conversation is special in its own way, but this one is uh really hits home literally uh for me. So uh it strikes a personal chord, and I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as I did. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and follow us on Facebook and Instagram where you can be part of the conversation. I want to hear from you as well. And until next time, in the words of my mom, be patient, be kind, and be faithful.