{"id":37220,"date":"2014-08-31T17:55:04","date_gmt":"2014-08-31T17:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37220"},"modified":"2014-11-09T17:33:27","modified_gmt":"2014-11-09T17:33:27","slug":"a-mothers-love-stories-of-struggle-sacrifice-love-and-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37220","title":{"rendered":"A Mother\u2019s Love: Stories of Struggle, Sacrifice, Love and Wisdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Mother\u2019s Love: Stories of Struggle, Sacrifice, Love and Wisdom<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Root<\/a>
\n2014-05-11<\/p>\n

Breanna Edwards<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Journalist Alysia Steele\u2019s explores the \u201cjewels in the Mississippi Delta\u201d who held it down for their families through decades of strife and racial struggle.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day weekend, and many of us may feel the keen absence of the women who meant the most to us.<\/p>\n

How many times have you wished you could turn back the hands of time and have one more conversation with one of the most influential women of your life? Maybe have notes of memorable anecdotes they shared?<\/p>\n

This was one of Alysia Steele\u2019s<\/a> biggest regrets concerning her paternal grandmother, Althenia A. Burton, who died 20 years ago. Since then, the memory of her grandmother has stayed with Steele, never fading, and ultimately culminating in the conception of her current project, a book proposal, \u201cJewels in the Delta<\/a>,\u201d that has gained interest from publishers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a huge sense of regret that as a trained journalist I never had the foresight to get her story and I\u2019ll never hear her voice again, and I can\u2019t even tell you how much that hurts me,\u201d Steele tells The Root<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Steele has interviewed about 47 women and is conducting the last of what will be a total of 50 interviews in the coming days. The project has taken her approximately 11 months to complete and countless hours of recording, transcribing, coaxing and traveling. It\u2019s been hard work, to be sure, but to Steele the end goal has been more than worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many of us stop and talk to our grandparents to get to their stories? To really ask them the questions that are hard?\u201d she adds…<\/p>\n

…In an excerpt from Steele\u2019s book proposal, Virginia Hower, 93, shared how she \u201cfelt dirty\u201d because of her ability to pass<\/a> for white in a segregated society.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was horror. You felt bad because you couldn\u2019t be with your grandmother or your grandfather. You just accepted it. I couldn\u2019t be with them because they were darker. Sometimes you felt bad because you could ride in a clean coach and just to think that your grandmother couldn\u2019t kiss you as you stepped off the train. But they accepted it, so why not enjoy the clean train? And then when I got down on the streets, we all kiss and carry on. Those was happy moments. And then you got to thinkin\u2019 how foolish this life is, how foolish. Then you got to thinkin\u2019 about it and say take advantage of it and a lot of people down here in Clarksdale<\/a>, they went to Chicago in \u201941 and never revealed they were colored.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So many fascinating stories from unassuming women who had nothing but love for their respective husbands and children and who never really spoke about the troubles and trials they had endured…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Mother\u2019s Love: Stories of Struggle, Sacrifice, Love and Wisdom The Root 2014-05-11 Breanna Edwards Journalist Alysia Steele\u2019s explores the \u201cjewels in the Mississippi Delta\u201d who held it down for their families through decades of strife and racial struggle. It\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day weekend, and many of us may feel the keen absence of the women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,24,8,1459,6462,820,20,25],"tags":[17827,17828,17826,147,3234],"class_list":["post-37220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-arts","category-media-archive","category-mississippi","category-passing-2","category-religion","category-usa","category-women","tag-alysia-burton-steele","tag-alysia-steele","tag-breanna-edwards","tag-photography","tag-the-root"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}