The Black Madonna - Symbol of a Mother's Love

Black Madonna Photo by Ramon FV Velasquez

With Mother's Day right around the corner, I've been thinking a lot lately about a mother's love. Not that I don't think about that every day. After all I am a mother of two beautiful children and am blessed to have had an extraordinary mother to raise me.

Although motherly love (what the Greeks call Storge) is one of the most powerful forces on earth regardless of the mother's ethnicity, I believe that a Black mother's love has a strength greater than the earth's gravitational pull.  Why? Because a Black mother's love has been fired in one of the hottest kilns on the planet - the kiln of slavery and its horrific aftermath.

During slavery a slave mother's children were literally torn from her arms and sold to the highest bidder. Yet, stories abound about slave mothers who stole away at night to find their children on other plantations. To this day, a Black mother's children are often torn from her arms by a system that denies her basic human rights such as decent housing, education, and food. Her children are too often easy pickings for rogue cops who use them for target practice.

My mother (center) and Great Aunt Lily

Black mothers and fathers have been criticized for spanking or whipping their kids. Now Toya Graham, the African American mother who went off on her son for throwing rocks at the Baltimore police, is being applauded. Finally, psychologists, social workers, and parents are seeing what black mothers and fathers have always known - if we don't firmly discipline our children, the system will maim or murder them.

My mother showered her five children with love but had a firm hand, and I am better off for it.  Despite the many whippings we got, we knew she loved us and woe be unto anyone who tried to harm us. She was a fierce protector of her young.


Edna Crutchfield

When I left home and moved into the larger community, I was adopted by surrogate mothers. There was Minnesota Artist and Poet Ginny Knight of Guild Press, Edna Crutchfield,  a founder of International Black Writers and Artists (IBWA), and  Los Angeles Artist and Community Activist Edwina Gaines who mentored me in writing and public speaking. I am eternally grateful to have had such remarkable maternal figures in my life.



Black Madonna Plate

One of my favorite images is that of the Black Madonna or Black Virgin.  According to mythologists, the Black Madonna symbolizes the archetypal dark goddess. Marian statues and paintings of her have existed since Medieval times and hundreds of her forms still exist in artwork all over Europe and South America.

For me, the Black Madonna personifies all that the Black mother suffers, sacrifices and endures.  Though hidden in the shadows of cathedrals, shrines and museums, she is revered and honored by many who view her as a representation of the great Earth Goddess who provides for all of her creatures and yet is often neglected and abused.

Today and every day, I honor all mothers, and in particular our Black mothers and grandmothers who came before to lay a foundation of love, courage, and faith on which we can stand.