Greetings:
It is hard to believe it is May already, but when we see the beautiful flowers blooming everywhere, we know it’s that time of year. May means warmer weather is on the way. It’s also the month when we celebrate Mother’s Day – a time to acknowledge motherhood with all its joys and responsibilities, sometimes mixed with grief and pain. To my mother, Pauline “Polly” Jackson, and my sisters especially, Happy Mother’s Day month.
At the end of this month, we’ll be celebrating Memorial Day, remembering all the dedicated servicemen who fought and died for our rights and our freedom. This year’s Memorial Day will have special meaning. For the first time in decades, we find ourselves in a war, and mothers and fathers are sending their sons and daughters off to battlefields across the globe. It's sad and unjust, yet our focus is to move us forward powerfully, with our stories, compassion, culture, self- love, and place keeping.
This year’s Mother’s Day is special for the South Side of Chicago. Last month, city officials, thanks in part to Jeanine Valerie Logan’s advocacy, broke ground for the southside’s first birthing center. The importance of this from a statistical and historical perspective is discussed in our article, Black Motherhood: Miracles &Crisis. It speaks of the miracle of a woman bringing a human being into the world; and the accompanying crises Black women face because of unequal maternal care – which is why a birthing center is so important, so critical, and so needed.
Everybody who knows the rapper who calls himself Ye, formerly Kanye West, may not be aware of his mother, the late Donda West, who not only raised him but helped shape his career. This Mother’s Day, South Side Drive’s Alpha generation writer, Jaelyn Logan, profiles Donda West through the perspectives of some of Donda West’s South Side friends.
South Side Drive writer, Floyd Webb, dug deep into the archives of our history to unearth two unsung heroines, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon and Paula Sherrod, and their fascinating stories of community activism. Enjoy this historic gem on our website at www.southsidedrivemag.com.
Black women are coming together around a mutual interest in filmmaking, and Yvonne Welbon provides much-needed space for a creative outlet for sisters to share their film ideas, connections, and interests. Father and daughter writing team, Walter Perkins and Patrice Perkins, interviewed Ms. Welbon and crafted an intriguing piece on the space Sisters in Cinema has gifted Chicago and the world along the far east 75th Street Corridor, just blocks from The Quarry Event Center.
We joyfully celebrate the life of a cultural changemaker and global influencer, and my friend, Sharon Morgan, now an ancestor. Unlike many of our heroes and sheroes who the community knew through TV broadcasts, history books, documentaries, and news clips and articles, Sharon Morgan led history-making adventures and milestones in advertising, the arts, and communities in Bronzeville, Jamaica, Paris, and Johannesburg, and, as the founder of Our Black Ancestry, in 2007, long before Louis Gates took to PBS. There are so many pieces to her life. A younger generation may know her only as Vincent Morgan’s awesome mom with cousins throughout the city. Many experienced her fabulous dinner parties or knew that her daughter-in-law, Shola Lynch, is an amazing, award-winning filmmaker, and her grandchildren became her world. There are so many wonderful things to be told about Sharon Morgan, about where and how she lived (although Bronzeville, Chicago, was her original base), her businesses, the books she authored, and the loves of her life. We trust you’ll enjoy this brief tribute.
There is something about a Muslim woman, and the beauty she radiates from the inside out. Sister Lisa Muhammad shares what makes her unique as a Muslim woman, and our article about the forthcoming Sajdah House, the restoration of Minister Elijah Muhammad’s home, certainly complements the Nation of Islam experience.
Happy Mother’s Day to mothers everywhere. To those who have physically lost their mothers, we encourage you to share their stories, their journeys, victories, and challenges while being Black in America.
Please join us in thanking the MacArthur Foundation and the Field Foundation of Illinois for their support, which partly allows South Side Drive Magazine to amplify Black voices and serve as a major Chicago publishing force, valuable in print and accessible online. Find us on social media. #southsidedrive. With Gratitude and Pride.
Yvette Moyo
Editor-in-Chief
