The Spiritual Authority of the Black Woman

I want to share something.

It’s sacred.

Precious.

Secret.

Undervalued, overlooked, yet powerful.

I want to tell you about my mother. All of them.

I met her at a Barbeque restaurant.

She asked me if I knew who I was. In the confusion, she explained to me that only the strong ones made it off the boat. These are my ancestors. That is who I am a descendant of. The strong ones. You are strong, Kierra.

I met her in a classroom.

She went beyond the curriculum and showed me why it was important to be smarter, stronger, and better. You’re a black woman, Kierra.

I met many of her in the sanctuary.

She was dressed in all white, sitting together on the first few rows of the front pew. Each had a fancy hat fit for royalty. She led the congregation in a song of lament about a lighthouse, shining, yet I can hardly imagine any of them swimming.

She commanded the church like God’s messengers. She used the fire in her bones as fuel to sing with a passion that gave me chills.

Must Jesus bear the cross alone?

He does not.

Black women have shared in the burden of the cross for hundreds of years. Formerly enslaved women were de-gendered because they performed field and manual labor their white, female counterparts never had to. White women were not passive bystanders and oftentimes made black women’s lives even more difficult, forcing black women to nurse their white babies while their own black babies suffered. Black women were objectified and labeled oversexed due to their sexual vulnerability and sexual violence against them ran rampant. Many narratives written by former enslaved men found it too disgraceful to recount the black woman’s misfortunes. Four hundred years later it continues. Black women are still masculinized, still objectified, and still vulnerable.

And still powerful.

This power doesn’t just come from accomplishments and achievements.

It comes from the authority that our mothers have passed to us through DNA. The struggle…