Black mothering as spiritual praxis: Engendering a multigenerational leadership paradigm

Abstract

Moral autobiography, as defined by eco-womanist scholar Melanie Harris, is in keeping with the womanist ethical task of uncovering Black women’s stories and highlighting their experience as an important source for their moral framework. This article encompasses the moral autobiography of my grandmother, Mama Eva R. Bird, whose theo-ethical response to the oppression of Black communities between the 1960s and 1980s led her and her husband, Rev. Van S. Bird, to open their home and their heart to activists in Philadelphia’s Black Liberation Movement. This article highlights the African heritage of mothering as central to the formation and sustenance of communities and as a valuable source for womanist interpretation. This article also introduces a decolonizing methodology, a Sankofic ethic of survival that challenges intellectual colonization and the proliferation of Afro-phobic discourse in Black religious and cultural spaces.