Black Women Taught Us

Introduction

Black Women Taught Us

Every Wednesday as I grew up, our tiny two-bedroom home became a concert hall for a majestic group of gospel singers. Auntie Donna Faye (no blood relation to me), a tall woman with a perfect asymmetrical bob, long curved fingernails, and a no-nonsense glare, was the alto who always rested right in the vocal pocket. Auntie Barbara (also no blood relation), who was the oldest of the group but would never share her actual age, always wore a big curly wig and bright-red lipstick. She was a soprano from another generation of Black singers. Sharon was a quiet, sarcastic woman whose baritone voice could rumble the whole house when she murmured an mhmmmmmm along to any song. Sometimes, I would tiptoe into the living room during rehearsal just to hear Sharon’s mhmmmmmms and sneak back out before my mom noticed. My mother’s sister, Deborah, was one of the greatest voices I had ever heard, a soprano whose vibrato made you feel like you were lying in a blanket fresh out of the dryer. I also thought she was the A Different World actress Jasmine Guy for most of my childhood because she resembled the actress so closely. Cassandra, the group’s pianist and vocal arranger, would glide into the room with her deep voice and thick-rimmed glasses every week. She was such a quietly powerful presence.

Then there was my mother, Cynthia. An unassuming woman standing at five foot five, she was always in a battle with her weight. She was, and still is, a beautiful, brownskinned woman with a perfectly placed mole nestled at the base of her philtrum, the area right below the nose that some people call the Cupid’s bow. My mother could sing anything and exuded so much charisma when she performed that most audience members got excited just to see her open her mouth and to bask in her gifts.

As a child, I always looked forward to seeing this aweinspiring group of women, who would crowd into our living room for their Wednesday rehearsals, circling our upright piano, singing all manner of gospel songs. Cassandra named the group “Majesty” before I was born and, just as it was for her kids, it was one of the first words I learned.

Majesty toured Oakland and the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area throughout the eighties and nineties, performing traditional gospel hits. They were known for their vocal embellishments that stemmed from years of listening to and studying the greats, like Shirley Caesar and the Clark Sisters. Singing high into the rafters and deep into the vocal valleys was common for them. The members of Majesty were different from the singers my church community and family saw on Bobby Jones Gospel every Sunday afternoon: They were our mothers, aunties, grandmothers, church leaders, and Sunday school teachers. They were the women who raised us, cooked for us, put on our Band-Aids, and scolded us for crossing the street without looking first.

They were ours.

“Fill my cup, let it overflow. Fill my cup, let it oh-ver-flow. Fill it up! Fill it up! And let it oh-oooh-oooh-oh-ver-flow. Let it oh-oh-oh-ver-flow, with love,” they would sing while forming their lips into perfect “O” shapes. They also sang “12 Gates to the City” by the Famous Davis Sisters. The harmonies that emanated from that living room sounded like they were ordained by God, likely because they were. Meanwhile, in my room, I’d be entertaining the kids. Sometimes, Auntie Barbara would bring a grandchild or two, and Sharon would do the same. I would immediately shift from being a usually lonely only child into a makeshift hostess and pseudo-mother for the younger kids. I’d set up the little ones with video games so that I’d be free to style the hair of my younger “cousins”: Esther, Lee Lee, and Lizzy, Cassandra’s three little girls. She had five children in total, but the boys were usually as far away from my makeshift hair salon as possible. We all had a nickname or two at that point. The house was only ever full like this on rehearsal nights and holidays. They were some of the most joyful nights of my young life.

To prepare for these evenings and my weekly hosting duties, I taught myself how to cook. I wanted to offer something, a small gift, to these women who brought so much warmth to my home. Rehearsal was at the end of the day, often after they had been working for hours and caring for children. Feeding them seemed like a kind and necessary gesture. By around the age of four, I could scramble eggs. At age eight, I tried my hand at baked chicken.

“Cynthia, this chicken is raw in the middle,” Auntie Barbara told my mom one week as she pulled the meat from the bone, exposing the red vertebrae and tendons that were clearly undercooked.

“Jennifer, be careful,” my mom scolded.

“Yes, Mommy,” I replied, feeling deflated.

“Don’t be too hard on her, Cynthia. The chicken is seasoned so well,” Auntie Barbara told her. “You did good, baby. Just cook it a little longer next time and poke it with a knife to see if blood comes out, okay?” she said as she leaned over to me, her lipstick bright and smudged from the chicken.

“Yes, Auntie Barbara,” I said, feeling determined to do better, as though this was an assignment for me to conquer.

Like my Auntie Barbara and the other members of Majesty, my mother, grandmothers, and my extended community of Black women and queer folks would often offer me lessons, teachings from their own lives—lessons that they had struggled to learn themselves, but that had likely saved them time and again. Auntie Donna taught me about navigating the world in a tall, large-bodied frame. “Don’t ever get dressed up and put on lipstick without throwing on some earrings, girl!” she would tell me at church. I still chuckle about this lesson whenever I see the collection of spare earrings on my desk. Sometimes the lessons were harder and carried more weight, like when my grandmother, an outspoken, ambitious, and headstrong Black woman, warned me, “Baby, people like us spend a lot of time alone, so you just have to find the people who love you and love them right back.” I was eleven years old when she said that. At the time, I didn’t understand what she meant by “people like us.” I understand now.

This informal knowledge network and storytelling community introduced me to the central tenets of Black Feminism before I had the language or the training to utter those words in that sequence. But no one tells you—at least, no one told me—that these quiet, quotidian experiences, these everyday Black feminisms, matter, or that they contain essential wisdom and knowledge for living. The recipes, the dating advice, the movement work, and the church and community organizing. Instead, just like most of the world, I failed to see these women’s work in my life as nuanced, different, significant, or deeply rooted in an ongoing fight for liberation and freedom. It wasn’t until I was surrounded by whiteness that these lessons became clearer to me.