Black Mothers and Our History | A Legacy of Healing

🎙️ Episode 11

Black Mothers and Our History | A Legacy of Healing

As we approach Mother’s Day, this episode invites us into a deeper reflection on the legacy of Black motherhood, one shaped by history, resilience, trauma, community, and profound love.

From the motherland to enslavement, from separation to survival, Black motherhood carries a story that is both painful and powerful. In this moving and personal reflection, Rita Coburn explores how generations of Black women have mothered not only their own children, but entire communities, often under unimaginable circumstances.

Through storytelling, history, and lived experience, this episode asks an important question:
What does Mother’s Day mean when we understand the full truth of our history?

🔍 What You’ll Hear in This Episode
The historical roots of Black motherhood, beginning in Africa and through enslavement
The legacy of separation, survival, and communal caregiving
How Black women have mothered across generations, often beyond their own families
Personal stories about Rita’s mother and the lessons of “mother wit”
The impact of community mothers, including figures like Maya Angelou and Merri Dee
Reflections on single motherhood, resilience, and cultural strength
What it means to honor mothers with truth, gratitude, and understanding

💬 A Defining Idea from This Episode

Motherhood is not only about birth. It is about vision, sacrifice, and the ability to give what is needed, even when it is not understood in the moment.

📚 Reading Resources

📖 Black-Eyed Peas for the Soul: Stories by and about Black Women by Donna Marie Coles Johnson
Includes Rita Coburn’s short story “Two Women and a Little Olive Oil,” a reflection on spiritual guidance, caregiving, and the lessons passed between women.

📖 Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood by Cecelie S. Berry and Janice Liddell
A powerful collection exploring the many dimensions of Black motherhood through personal essays and storytelling.

📣 Resources / Links

🎬 Share the film
W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel with a Cause premieres May 19, 2026
Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kMsik6rDQM

📄 Transcript available here
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2598323

📺 Watch the episode
https://youtu.be/qRAmp6Q5-Nw 

🎧 Listen on your favorite platform
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2598323/episodes/19009870

🔗 Stay connected
https://linktr.ee/ritacoburnmedia

🎬 About the Series

Our Truth, Our History, Our Story (Our THS) explores the people, ideas, and cultural forces shaping Black history and storytelling today.

👥 Production Credits

Host: Rita Coburn
Executive Producer: Andrew T. Carr
Producers: Christine Coburn Whack, H. Lee Whack

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Last week we talked to the historian David Levering Lewis. We'll pick that part two up next week, as we need to discuss Mother's Day this week as you prepare for Mother's Day this Sunday. For many African Americans, our history as mothers begins in the motherland. For many of us, that is where the story starts. The beauty of an African society where people live through community, hardship, rituals, joy, and the challenges of tribal life. A life we today know little about. By the time we were stolen and began to be shipped to America, motherhood is far from a pretty story. One of the first things that happened to us was we would inherit a long line of separations. Separation from our country meant in many cases separation from our children, left on a continent as we were put to sea. Separation again on slave ships, and separation again when we arrived in this country, and our children were sold away from us. All of those things are deeply traumatic, but they are also a part of our history and part of our truth. One of the first things we learned to do was to take care of other people's children as if they were our own. Children who were left behind when their parents were sold, boys and girls on plantations who needed mothering. We opened our arms, our breasts, and our lives to them. We even learned to care for and love the children of slave owners, sometimes at the involuntary expense of caring for our own. So our history as mothers in this country has not been easy. Add to that an initial birth into poverty where we could not always provide as much for our children as we wanted to. And yet we built emotional strength, spiritual strength, and all the strengths required to mother. I remember my mother telling me that in the South where she grew up, in Washington, Georgia, having been born in 1922, it was not uncommon for her father or the men of that generation to have multiple families, children outside of their marriage. It was also not uncommon for all the women to take care of one another's children. There was a kind of tribal community in place even in this country. That didn't happen everywhere, but it's one part of our history as mothers. One horrible story she told me was this: that during that time of Jim Crow, a white man could come to the farm, hitch his horse outside with the husband in the field working, and the man would go into the house, and months later there would be a mulatto child born, and that child would be taken care of by all of the community and cared for. Many of us have to reconcile these ideas during our lives. Some of that is very normal. Some of it because of the circumstances is also very difficult, and some of it is extremely joyful to be able to mother a child. To mother our own mothers, to hold them close. I have a friend whose mother had children by several different men, and her gift to her mother was to love her, support her, and give her so much attention that this woman, whatever her reasons, whatever her circumstances, could feel whole, respected, and loved as a woman and as a mother. As black people, we do have more single mothers in our population than other races, and there can be all sorts of societal reasons for that. Approximately 47% of black mothers in the United States are single parents. That is the highest rate among major racial groups. So that means that mothering can be challenging, but no less important or joyful, because the bottom line is this our mothers are the portals through which we enter the earth. We have an opportunity to honor that position and to honor the person who allowed us to be here. So to some extent, a Mother's Day gift can be a gift of acceptance, a gift of knowledge, a gift of history, a gift of forgiveness. It can also be a gift of celebration or land anywhere in between. Because we have learned to mother other people, it is really in our DNA. We have church mothers. There are women in our lives who mother us and we learn to mother others because they need it at the time. I remember a woman, as do many Chicagoans, named Mary D. She was a television personality, but she was also a friend and like a mother to me because she was older. She once gave me a very expensive pair of pants more than 20 years ago, and I still wear them. I befriended her, and she became that mother figure to me. So one day while I was in her home, she was simply observing me and she said, Come back to my room. I want to give you something. And she gave me these pair of pants. I'm a pants girl, not a dress girl. And these stirrup pants were very expensive. And she looked at my questioning face and said, You need this right now. That is beyond friendship. That is a mothering instinct. What can I give you that you need right now? That's what a mother does. I like you, mother, other people, other people's children that need it at the time. And sometimes I have problems with my own mother. I remember telling her once when she was older, and so was I, that I'd always been angry with her because there was a summer job I wanted at the factory where she worked. It paid $15 an hour, a lot of money at the time, and I wanted that job. I watched her help other people get that same job, and I named them, you gave that person a chance, that person a chance, and you got them that job, but you never let me have it. And she was silent. And then she said, I got them that job because they needed it. They needed the money, they needed it for where they were in life. But when I looked at you, I knew you needed to go to college, you needed something else. And I knew that if you had gotten that job, met someone there, and settled down, and she didn't quite say it that way, that you might have had a life you would later regret. There is nothing wrong with a factory job. I worked at the factory, she said, but I saw that you were supposed to do something else. So I would not have given you that job, and I watched you ask for it over and over again and had no intentions of ever making a call for you. At best, motherhood is about vision, about seeing something in your child or the people around you. That story made my mother laugh. And although I started off haughty, I laughed too, because that was mother wit, wisdom executed. She knew what to do. I look now at those moments, and I look at mothers and I watch when they do those kinds of things. I feel blessed to have had Mary D. A woman in my church named Bernice Parham, who taught me how to pray for other people and how to go to hospitals and pray for the sick and people's children. I wrote a story, a short story about that called Two Women and a Little Olive Oil. She taught me how to do something outside of myself. And that is another reason that you are mothered and you learn to mother and how you learn to mother. I also think about the time I spent with Maya Angelo. For about four years, from 2006 to 2010, I spent almost one week a month with Maya Angelo in her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, or on her bus or traveling to her home in Harlem. It was part of my job as her producer for Oprah Radio. And during that time I learned a great deal. She was not only a mother figure to me, she was a mother figure for this country, and many other people read her work and her words today. Her words today continue to mother us as a nation. She was always learning and she was always teaching. She would quote her grandmother, When you get give, when you learn teach. So there were many things that she taught me during that time, and I'll share one lesson with you. I entered 58, which is what we called 58 West 120th Street in Harlem. It was a beautiful day, but I have to admit I sat pouting a bit in front of her. She asked me, What's wrong with you? And I hesitated and then said, Nothing, nothing. She said, Oh yes, I can tell there's something wrong with you, and I can tell you what it is. Now tell me. And so I said, Well and she looked at me and said, Be quiet. I said, but you asked me, she said, hush. I said, I was going to tell you, and she said, No, I will tell you. Your problem is that you're ungrateful. It's a beautiful day. You are ungrateful. You have a husband who loves you, children who love you, and Oprah Winfrey doesn't write little checks, and you're sitting here with me. So what you need to do, whatever it is that has your mouth turned down, you need to be grateful. So I learned from that lesson the gratitude from a mother about being a mother and being a person and how we can be grateful. So as you get ready for this Mother's Day, there are a number of gifts that you can give. You can give gifts that are beyond flowers, gifts that are beyond visiting a grave site. You can give the gift of your gratitude for being here, for being a mother, for the desire to mother, for mothering others, and for all those who mothered you. Happy Mother's Day. So I ask you to think about the gift of Mother's Day. It really isn't flowers or visiting a gravesite, whether we had great times with our mothers, whether we don't know them at all, or whether our experience falls somewhere in between. We can lift up Mother's Day as a day of gratitude to honor the woman, the portal through whom we came. Whether it is a bomb or we pat ourselves on the back for getting through and even enjoying the gift of motherhood. This is a day to celebrate. Biblically, we're told to honor our mother and father, that our days may be long on the earth. So we honor the person, we honor the position. For us, motherhood goes back to a very ancient place. I sit in front of these Messiah women. They build homes, they carry a strength, they mother children, they protect a culture, they carry the daily life of the community. Their strength is one of survival, endurance, protection, and continuity. Today some of them become mothers much younger than they wish to be. Mothers have their challenges all over the country. In one image you see a mother with a sheep, a sign of wealth and provision. We are women, we mother other women. We carry the children, the memory, and the well, and we fight our way through whatever circumstances are placed before us to honor our motherhood, our desires for motherhood, as well as our mothers. Whatever your story is, have a beautiful, deep, and sincere celebration of this Mother's Day. We'll come back to David Levering Lewis next week. Thank you for joining Our Truth, Our History, Our Story. I am the producer, director, and writer of W. E. B. Du Bois Rebel with a Cause, a PBS documentary that will air on American Masters PBS May 19th of this year, 2026. Please search for the YouTube trailer and share it today.