Sacred bond: Black men and their mothers

New Crisis, The, Dec 1998 by Brown, Keith Michael

Although Lewis Paul Long's mother was not a single mother, she knew the importance of having not only one but several black male role models in her son's life. She wanted her son to benefit from the strengths of many. More so than any other mother I met, Marie Clemons Long Smith was intent on finding mentors for her son and ensuring that he learned from them. She also had those expectations of herself she was just as intent on being a consistent mentor to her son.

When I met Long at the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., where be served as a White House Fellow, be showed me a folder filled with letters of inspiration that his mother had written to him over the years. She has remained to him a constant source of spiritual guidance and love. His mother is a teacher, and her dream for her son came true the day he visited her classroom to tell her that be had been accepted to Harvard Business School. Long is currently a senior adviser to the president of Howard University, where both he and his father are alumni.

Long's mother was the tie that bound the family together. She helped mend Long's fragile relationship with his father, Willie L. Long, and encouraged them to develop a mature relationship that has proved meaningful to them both. Ultimately, Long's story shows how crucial a mother can be in bolstering other significant relationships in her son's life.

Lewis Paul Long Business Executive Age: Thirty-One

Mother: Marie Clemons Long Smith

Author Keith Brown reappraised his mother when he saw her reaction to the death of his older brother from AIDS. The insight he gained into the stubborn, unlimited, creative love of good mothers prompted him to interview other "successful" men-whom Brown defines as those who avoid falling victim to the social pathologies that disproportionately plague African American families. The resulting portraits of mother-son relationships, illustrated with striking photographs by Adger W. Cowans, comprise a touching volume of rare affirmation for Black Women, and for the men their boy-children become. Sacred Bond's thirty-six testimonials witness the profound humanity of African Americans, as exampled in the three portraits following here.

The summer of my sophomore vear in college, my mother came to me and said, "Enough is enough. I've been with your dad for over twenty-five years, but I got to go."' I said, fine, you need to get on with your life. I told her that leaving him was probably the best thing for everybody.

Over the years I had a lot of disappointment when it came to my father, but there was one incident that's been difficult to shake. It happened during my college graduation. We have the same birthday, and I graduated from Howard exactly twenty-five years to the day after he did. I felt the graduation was something we could share despite the tension between us. He was always proud to be a Howard University graduate. So when I was graduating from his alma mater, I thought he would be really happy and proud about it, especially because I had done well.

At that time my parents' divorce proceedings were being finalized. My mom had sent him an announcement to my graduation, in spite of what was going on between them. She had also sent him newspaper articles about me because I had been accepted to Harvard Business School as a senior, which was pretty good. She was managing all of that for me. So the day of the graduation, I said to my father, "Where am I going to meet you?" He said, "I'm not going. You had your mother send that stuff to me and you didn't invite me personally." I told him mom took care of it because I was busy relocating, trying to find a job, an apartment. But he said, "No, I'm not coming." At that point I just shut down. It completely hurt me. Things like that created this arm's-length distance between us.

My mother never bad-mouthed my father. She encouraged our relationship from the moment she separated from him. She used to think that my father somehow felt that I had eclipsed his success, and that that may have created some feeling of envy. My mother tried to compensate for it, and she always pointed out my father's positive qualities. It was important to her that I have positive black male role models in my life, my father being the primary one. I also spent time with her brothers, who were educated and who had achieved a fair amount. And at church she always pointed out the deacons and black men who were elders. She also made sure that I spent summers with my grandfather, because he was such a strong figure in her life. I saw how he commanded respect in the largely segregated South of the early seventies, when most southern blacks didn't have anything.

My grandfather had a lot to do with my mother's strong-willed, independent nature. If there was something my mom wanted to happen, it would happen. My father called her Molly Brown, for the unsinkable ship. My mother always had her own bank account, would manage her own funds. It was very important to her to save her own money. I think her independence led my father to feel somewhat less than a husband. And for a long time I think he viewed me as my mother's child.