Bring back Big Mama

Ebony, May, 2004 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

IN this political year, pundits and Brothers and Sisters on the block are ruminating on how to best help Black America survive and thrive in the 21st century. While we attend symposiums and the experts debate whether the answer is more jobs, reparations, better housing or better voter records, I offer a simple and cost-conscious solution: Bring back Big Mama. There's no better month than May, when we honor all mothers and mother figures, than to call back the old-school mothers and grandmothers who were a seminal force in preparing and sustaining legions of Black leaders through the horrors of slavery, the reneging on the promises of Reconstruction, the cruelty of Jim Crow, and the toil of the Civil Rights era.

In another day, another era, mature women were celebrated for their wisdom. The old-school savvy of our mothers and grandmothers was like living water to Black people. It was a weapon, a warning, a balm, and a map. It was a way out of no way. And "the hardheaded" (Big Mama's words) ignored such advice at their peril, because as grandmother predicted, you would return, beaten by the world, to be soothed by her gnarled hands. Where are Big Mama, Muh Dear, Grandma, and her peers?

It seems that today's Big Mama wants to be Beyonce! Complete with a belly-revealing "phat" wardrobe, too many of today's grandmas are competing with their grandkids. Instead of being the voice of reason, they want to compare tattoos! Instead of soothing the local unwed mother, they themselves are the local unwed mothers. A prominent educator once told me why she decided to remarry after her first husband's death. "What am I to tell my grandchildren about this man who is hanging around me--'he's grandma's man?'" she said sarcastically. She was firm in her belief that you must walk the walk before children before you can talk the talk. That ramrod of moral authority that no one dared cross is AWOL and perhaps headed for extinction, leaving a nation of young men and women deprived of the guidance they need to be of service to their people. Or even to survive.

I was in my local hair/nail salon the other day when I peeked out from under the hair dryer and saw a young mother getting her nails done with a tiny infant on her lap. Never mind that the baby looked to be 4 days old, but the infant was on oxygen! She was getting a full set of nails (complete with acrylic fumes) over the head of an infant with obvious respiratory troubles. I couldn't help but think--where is her Big Mama? The Big Mama of my day wouldn't let a young mother out of the house with a newborn. The Big Mama of not-too-long ago breathed wisdom to the young.

She fed families meals that included vegetables--fast food was not the family staple. She urged her daughters and granddaughters not to fall for the "okey-doke" and told her sons and grandsons that all that glitters is not gold. She urged the youth to pursue excellence. And under that church hat was a world of hard-won knowledge and the wisdom to apply it. She, in the words of the children's nursery rhyme, acted her age and not her shoe size.

Big Mama may not be able to single-handedly right all that is wrong in Black America. But she can instill the fortitude to stay the course, no matter how bumpy, to walk through the doors, once they open, and to hold the position with honor, once it is attained. So on this Mother's Day, give thanks for the Big Mama in your life who brought you through. And in her honor, work hard to become the kind of venerable woman from the last century who brought Black America into this one. Common sense isn't common, as my grandma used to say, but we can all try to echo their motherwit, pithy advice and reflect their light onto the next generation.