It was shared at last night's moving 70th birthday tribute to our most beloved exiled freedom fighter, capturing her soulbaring attempt to defy the pain of exile in the face of a most personal crisis and loss...Stories coming soon...
Ode To My Mother,by Assata
Shakur
For her mother, Doris Johnson,who passed away on Sept. 7, 1996
My mother was Doris Johnson…
She was a descendant of slaves. She
was an Afrikan woman, far away from Afrika.
My
mother was born in the 1920s. She was a child of the Depression. She knew what
it meant to stand in line for bread and government cheese. Although my mother
grew up in Queens, New York, her parents were from Wilmington, North Carolina.
She experienced rampant discrimination in the North and the humiliation of
racial segregation in the South. and suffered all her life under the racist
institutions and the racist policies of the united states government…
My mother was Doris Johnson…
She was a short woman, just a little
over five feet, but there was nothing about her that was petite or fragile. Her
skin was like clover honey, her face liquid, always moving, always changing.
One cut of her eyes could stop you dead in your tracks, just as one of her
observations could make you double up in laughter. As a young woman, my mother
was stunningly beautiful. Her beauty was never truly recognized. She was
sensitive and intelligent. Her astuteness was never really appreciated. She
lived in a racist country that denied her humanity, assumed her inferiority, minimized
her abilities and demanded her passive acquiescence.
My mother was Doris Jackson…
She was tenacious, always thinking,
always planning. She was cautious yet fearless. Her body moved in quick
impatient gestures. She had her own special way of talking-she spoke in vivid,
incomplete sentences that always got the point across. She was an observant
woman, searching, exploring, intense. When provoked, she could be explosive.
She was a tooth and nail person. She could never stand anything that was
halfdone, that was halfhearted. She believed in putting your whole heart into
things, in doing your absolute best. She believed in sweat and elbow grease.
One of the quickest ways to annoy her was to mutter the words ‘I can’t.’ She
was a fighter and she believed in fighting to the last minute, to the last
breath, to the last drop of blood.
My mother was Doris Johnson…
She understood the value of
education. She worked and she studied. She worked hard and she studied hard. In
order to finish college, she worked doing days work. She worked in offices, she
worked in factories. She graduated from Hunter College in New York. She then
became a teacher in the New York City school system. It was there that learned
of the damage that the schools do to Afrikan children. Working as a teacher,
she witnessed the racist indifference of those who control school systems. She
saw how children of color were tracked into inferior, dead end curriculums. She
worked in ‘600’ schools and saw how Black and poor children were labeled as
‘criminals’ and ‘troublemakers’ way before they reached adulthood.
To
pay the bills, my mother worked two or three jobs at the same time. She took
after school jobs, summer jobs, whatever she could get. My memories of my
mother are often tied to work. I see her eternally marking papers, writing in
plan books, cutting up crepe papers for school plays. With two young daughters,
my mother went back to school to get her masters degree. I can remember her
then, her head stuck in a book, always running, always tired, coming home from
work, cleaning and cooking and then running off to school.
My mother was Doris Johnson…
She was oppressed as an Afrikan and
as a woman. From early childhood, her life was one of discrimination. She told
us many stories. About the teacher who opened the door with a handkerchief so
she wouldn’t have to touch the same doorknobs as Black children. About winning
a scholarship to a predominantly white school where the white students turned
over garbage cans and sat on them, rather than sit next to my mother. She told
us about being fired more than once for telling off the racist bosses. Although
she spoke clearly, she was forced to take the oral exam because she had an
unacceptable ‘accent’.
As an Afrikan woman, my mother went
thru hell. She grew up in a period where Black women were considered ‘ugly’ and
‘inferior,’ and when almost every aspect of the reinforced that racist concept.
She lived in a time when women were expected to be submissive, to suffer
silently. She lived in a time when men were taught to see women as little more
than sex objects. There were men who resented my mother’s intelligence, and saw
her achievement as some kind of a threat to them. It was impossible for my
mother to escape the constraints of her era. My mother lived through turbulent
destructive relationships and for a long time, she was a battered woman. In the
latter years, like so many Black women, she was alone. Like so many of her
sisters, she chose a life of solitude and dignity, rather than to face or
tolerate betrayal, disrespect or abuse.
My mother was Doris Jackson…
Her life was not an easy one. She
faced a hostile world, and had to raise two children with very little support.
There were too many pressures and too many responsibilities. There were many
problems, health problems. There were times when she found those problems
overwhelming and she tried to escape. She tried to run away. She tried
desperately to dull the pain. But my mother was a courageous woman. She found
the courage to confront her difficulties and to overcome her weaknesses. She
found the courage to stand on her own two feet, to confront the pain and
difficulties and to go on with her life, but it was hard.
My mother is Doris Johnson…
She wanted to protect her children.
She wanted them to lead good lives. At first, she found it hard to understand
my choices.I was her eldest daughter with a big bushy Afro and a big rebellious
mouth. My mother saw me as I was, part
women, part child, idealistic, wild and serious. She was afraid for me. But
soon she came to understand the intensity and the totality of my commitment.
She knew me better than anyone, and knew that it was impossible to live some
dream-like, middle class existence in the midst of so much racist
oppression. Gradually, she not only
accepted my choices, but she supported them. Gradually, my mother also became
my comrade.
The choices I made weighed heavy on
her. She would see me sporadically. They were often quick, erratic visits.
Sometimes I would come home exhausted, tense, preoccupied, and she would scold
me for being poorly fed or poorly dressed.
And
then came the absences. The times when I had to go underground. They were
difficult times for me and they were terrible times for her. So many nights
when she scanned the radio news stations, waiting to hear some dreaded news.
She had to sift thru the lies. Ignore the slander and the total denigration. I
will never forget when I was captured. I did not know how my mother would
react. I remember how she told me in no uncertain terms, that she was proud of
me and that supported me all the way.
My mother was Doris Johnson…
For almost 30 years, her telephone
was tapped, her home was bugged and there was an electric eye next to her
apartment door. My mother was constantly followed, constantly harassed. There
were mysterious break ins of her house where nothing of value was taken. My
mother endured all kinds of searches, stripsearches to come and see me in
prison. She would travel for hours, and there were many times when they refused
to let her see me. The police tried to terrorize my mother in her home and on
her job, and when I was able to escape, they harassed my mother to the point
that she had a heart attack.
When
I was pregnant with my daughter Kakuya, my mother underwent a metamorphosis.
She dedicated her entire being, her complete energy to Kakuya’s survival and to
her education. My was intent on making sure that Kakuya grew up to be strong,
that she grew up Afrikan, that she grew up knowing who she was, and where she
came from. From the moment she was born, my mother surrounded her with African
images, African culture, and an abundance of love. When she was just a little
baby, my mother read her poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes,
Margaret Walker and a multitude of Afrikan and Afrikan American poets and
writers. She taught Kakuya about Harriet Tubman, about Nat Turner and about the
long struggle of Afrikan people.
My mother was Doris Johnson…
She came through snowstorms and
through thunderstorms to bring Kakuya to see me. She fought the school system.
She fought the prison system. She fought whatever system there was that was
holding down her children, holding her people down. My mother was shy, but she
loved our people. She was a great listener. She was compassionate. As one of
our elders, she tried to be objective, to understand what people were saying,
what people wanted, what people needed, and to give good advice.
My
mother had a beautiful smile and she gave it freely. She gave it
generously. She made people feel
comfortable, feel like they had known her for years. When my mother really
liked somebody, her favorite complement was to say that they were ‘down to
earth.’
My mother was an activist. She was always present. She was always
supportive of our struggle. On cold winter days, on hut summer nights, you
could find my mother at rallies, on picket lines, at meetings to free political
prisoners.
My mother was Doris Johnson…
She loved life. She loved colors. She
loved brightness. She loved art, especially Afrikan art. She loved music. Her
favorite was what she called Progressive Jazz. She loved Errol Garner, Miles
Davis, John Coltrane and so many others. It was thru my mother that I learned
to appreciate the Blues, to appreciate Calypso, to love Gospel. It was from my
mother that I learned to appreciate the culture of the Diaspora, to love rice
and peas and curried chicken. It was from my mother that I learned the limbo
dance, about Paul Robeson and Katherine Dunham and Miriam Makeba. My mother
came to visit me often in Cuba. She felt at ease here, said it was one of the
few places she could really relax. When she returned to the states from one of
those trips here, she was asked if she was a terrorist because she visited Cuba
so often.
My mother was a bridge player. She
played duplicate bridge and she loved to play in tournaments. To her, the mind
was a muscle, and she believed that if you don’t lose it, you would lose it. My
mother loved to laugh, and loved to party. She loved to travel, to experience
new things. In short, she loved to learn. My mother loved to read, and her
books bear her special emblem. She would write notes on the border of pages, on
tops of pages, and it is much joy that I open the books that she gave me and
encounter her scrawling notes.
My mother was a family person. There
was no sacrifice too great to make for her family. She loved her children,
Beverly and I, and she loved her grandchildren, Donny, Brad and Kakuya. She and
my Aunt Evelyn were sisters in struggle. They fought together. They plotted
together, resisted together, kept our family together. My mother was a family
person. She gave most of her money, every bit of strength she had to help take
care of my grandparents. My mother instilled in us the importance of family and
the importance of love. She taught us the importance of unity. She taught us to
take care of each other, to look out for each other. My memories of my mother
are intrinsically tied to struggle. I will never forget her speaking Spanish
and pretending to be some kind of diplomat just so my sister and I could enter
an amusement park in the segregated South. My mother did not live by America’s
rules. She taught us that when you live by the rules of your oppressor, you
will always be ‘it’ and you will always ‘strike out.’ I will always remember
her hiding Kakuya’s baby bottle in her bosom, because baby’s milk was
contraband in jail. So many little memories of her individual acts of
resistance come to me now. If I try to write them down, I will cry again.
My mother was Doris Johnson…
She had the courage to reach out.
She had the courage to grow. She had the courage to heal. She was committed to
our family, our extended family. She was committed to our struggle. She was
committed to our people. She was a freedom lover. My mother was a spiritual
person. She was not too fond of
organized religion, but she paid great homage to our ancestors. She never
forgot the history of our people, or the history of our struggle. My mother
loved this earth, and she paid homage to its beauty. My mother prayed for a
better world as she fought for one. My mother was a decent human being. If
there is paradise, I know she is there.
If there is an upper room, I know she is up yonder with her god. My mother died
on the day of Yemaya, who is the mother of all life, the Yoruba goddess of
motherhood and the sea. I am sure she is there with the ancestors. I am sure
she is looking over us, looking out for us, lending her strength and her
energy. My mother has made our ancestors proud. I can only hope to follow in
her footsteps, to follow her example.
I thank my ancestors, and I thank my
god that my mother was Doris Johnson.
Mommy, I love you so much. Mommy, I will always love you. Mommy, I promise to
carry on…
