STRONG BLACK WOMEN

Of all the cliches or stereotypes about us this one is truer than you know. Yes, we are strong black women because we have had to be to survive, not only for ourselves but for the very survival of our race. After, all America bred us like cattle to ensure that the labor force could survive the harsh elements of nature; and in so doing, we became stronger, in order, to survive nature and the brutality of racist people. We, strong black women worked alongside our male counterparts in the fields, but we were also expected to work the fields shortly after giving birth. We got even stronger when the children that we loved and nurtured were ripped from our embrace for the auction block.

Slavery is over, but the strength that was birthed from that institution is the same strength that allowed us to survive, Sharecropping, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and Institutional Racism.

We are oftentimes, the sole or primary provider for our families. We are still working beside our black men in a hostile environment subjective to discrimination intended to break us and keep us “in our place.” Our children are still ripped from our embrace by gang violence, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, police brutality and imprisonment...

We are strong, because if we stopped praying, struggling, nurturing, loving, encouraging, we could not survive life in America.

Yes, we are strong black women, but we are also soft, and vulnerable. There are times that we feel like giving up. There are times that we need to be treated with care, nurtured, and lifted-up. Sometimes we need to be held and told that everything is going to be okay. Sometimes we need to rest when we are tired. We need to cry when we are distressed, and we need to pray always.

Come, closer my sister, let me hold you in my arms while I assure you that everything is going to be okay. Our children are going to be okay; our loved ones are going to be okay, and we are going to be okay.