This last week I spent next to my mother's hospital bed as she lies living or dying from a massive stroke. Her 87 year-old left side paralyzed, she lies between another 80 year-old woman (black) sufferinig from a similar stroke and a hispanic woman. On her other side, her left side, this 102, spry hispanic woman comes and goes from her bed with the aid of a wheelchair. She's been in this same bed for 8 years, I'm told.

A single-mother of 3 self-driven kids, then teens, my mother supported and nourished us best as she could. She worked in a tire factory. She worked graveyard for many years. She worked hard for her 2 weeks vacation every year, and she staid home cleaning Not well educated academically, her sociological sense for fair and decent treatement of others trickled down to her young brood. We were raised without any apparent bigotry for others, besides our typical sibling rivalry.

My mother's black neighbor has at her side a woman without ill-will toward anyone. She receives visitors about as often as my mother, perhaps not for as long a period of time. It's hard to say, and I know it's hard to stay and watch "mom" suffering without power over her once factory working body. So it must be just as hard for our black woman patient's family to remain, too.

She is black, as black as one becomes. As such her skin is taunt, without blemish, and has that pretty, solid black complexion so common to completely black people.

Imagining this woman's life-long experience as a "black woman" struggling through our world as a woman strikes me as an awesome experience, considering what my mother went through. But my mother's white, always has been white, and has always been "attractive" as I was so often told by teachers. No one ever used the "N word" derisively toward my mother.

So here's my mom next to a woman who survived both womanhood and being black in racist America, a once slave society that did not honestly end slavery until 1941 when Roosevelt ordered it so. You see, southern states no longer "captured" blacks for its aristocracy's cheap labor. And southern states stopped sending its "prisoners" into nothern states to mine for monopoly capital's extraction needs. All this ended following our first days into World War II. (I'll write more on this at a later time. )

These words bring me to my subject following my long introduction. What is it about black women that gives them power enough to step away from suicide at that last moment and say, "yes," to a life dominated by white and powerful men, in most part. I do not forget the role of black men in their lives either, and it is not my place to demonize white men, many of whom, like Michale Moore, have set the bar for fighting bigotry and racism, but too low.

It's the kind of people who come to California -- they're the ones who are not satisfied at home. People like that don't give up . . . If one things goes wrong, they'll try another. - John Weaver, writer

 

Many slaves arrived in Los Angeles at their master's bidding. Some perservered and made a new life for others as well as for theirselves.

Biddy Monroe

I'm inclined to wonder how many black female students graduate from Los Angeles schools without hearing the name, "Biddy Mason"? This may sound racist and condenscending, to say the least, but few sociologist would argue that Los Angeles' black females suffer from low self-esteem. And no wonder when we follow our culture's definitions of beauty and othe variable values.

Yes, of course all of our Los Angeles students should know about Biddy Mason. When sounding out Mason, we should think of this 18th century business and spiritual leader, not preserving food. An ex-slave driven to Los Angeles by her Mormon owners in 1851. After 34 years in slavery, a celebrated course case gave her and others their freedom.

A religious leader, she used her home for other freed slaves taking part in religious services. Biddy worked hard at nursing and saved her money. After some years of crawling up from our social hierarchy's bottom, she managed to buy land in downtown Los Angeles. She became a major land owner and did not look back. She helped to organize other black residents into the First African American Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles.

Her family prospered following her leadership in land ownership. Once freed from slavery, given capitalism's revolutionary social leveling opportunities, Biddy showed other black women something can be done, at least for a few in the right place at the right time. "Location, location, location," we're told by our friendly land brokers.

I'm now reminded of my thrust at black women surviving sucicide risks in spite of being at the bottom of America's social hierarchy. What is it about a woman of this caliber, up against slavery and all of its connotations when mixed with racism that turned her into a survivor and a brilliant success on terms unavailble to her in our southern states, at least until most recently. If we could somehow apply social-psychological tests biographically, we might learn something about Los Angeles suicides among ethnic groups and Anglo males.

What a role model for American school kids who need black women role models in their world desperately. If for no other reason than suicide prevention, we need black women stories told throughout American culture much more often.

I'm reminded of "When Atlas Surged" by Ayn Rand, I don't recall any black women in her novels, come to think about it. See my Toni Morrison page.