I remembered my great grandmother who walked everywhere rather than sit in the back of the bus.
I think about North Carolina and my home town and i remember the women of my grandmother’s generation: strong, fierce women who could stop you with a look out the corners of their eyes.
Women who walked with majesty; who could wring a chicken’s neck and scale a fish.
Who could pick cotton, plant a garden and sew without a pattern.
Women who boiled clothes white in big black cauldrons and who hummed work songs and lullabys.
Women who visited the elderly, made soup for the sick and shortnin bread for the babies.
Women who delivered babies, searched for healing roots and brewed medicines.
Women who darned sox and chopped wood and layed bricks.
Women who could swim rivers and shoot the head off a snake.
Women who took passionate responsibility for their children and for their neighbors’ children too.
The women in my grandmother’s generation made giving an art form. “Here, gal, take this pot of collards to Sister Sue”; “Take this bag of pecans to school for the teacher”; “Stay here while I go tend Mister Johnson’s leg.”
Every child in the neighborhood ate in their kitchens.
They called each other sister because of feeling rather than as the result of a movement.
They supported each other through the lean times, sharing the little they had. The women of my grandmother’s generation in my home town trained their daughters for womanhood.
They taught them to give respect and to demand respect.
They taught their daughters how to churn butter; how to use elbow grease."
-- Assata Shakur --