Fear Is a Reality of Black Motherhood

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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April 5, 2023

By Anissa Durham, Word in Black

Black child and mother — A new study found parents’ worries about their children are linked to their neighborhood quality. (Eye for Ebony on Unsplash)

“There are too many dead kids not to assume that could be yours.”

As a Black mother in Washington D.C., Tara Brown says she worries for her 15-year-old daughter on a daily basis. Gun violence and safety are some of her top concerns. Brown is not alone in those feelings.

A recent national survey by the Pew Research Center found that parents’ worries about their children are often linked to how they rate the quality of their neighborhoods. Some of the top concerns for the more than 3,700 respondents include their children being bullied, struggling with anxiety or depression, and getting shot.

Of the Black respondents, 29% of Black parents surveyed rated their neighborhood in the only fair/poor category.

Word in Black talked to Black parents about their fears.

Black parents sometimes dread talking to their sons about police violence.

Our breaking news page covers the Black experience.

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