In honor of Mother’s Day, I reflected about the unsung contributions of Black women such as the generational and social network of wisdom. To represent the Black Woman Network, I used an African paper doll template, complete with a curly afro. Taking advantage of the gift of fabric given to me by a friend, each of the 12 African cloth cutouts graced a different decoration.
The T-shirts read, “A Black Woman Probably Did It First.” In the great tradition of shining a light on something we in the Black community have taken for granted, but the world now cannot live without, I present to you the following: The Internet.
I’m not saying that Black women invented the internet. I’m saying we WEREthe original internet, especially my mother’s generation and the Black women who came before them. Their network of knowledge passed from neighbor to neighbor, flowing from one generation to the next. If they didn’t know the answer, they knew who could supply an accurate answer. News traveled so far and fast among the network of Black women that it took the male-dominated fields of science, math and engineering centuries to approximate, match and finally surpass the natural efficiency of the Black Woman Network.
My foremothers never needed any fancy cumbersome gadgetry to disseminate their wisdom as they went about their wifely, motherly, daughterly, womanly duties. We are always so bedazzled by the bells and whistles of electronic devices that we dismiss the greater foundational basis of wisdom, information and entertainment. Sometimes mischaracterized as idle gossip, the network also provided social status long before friending, tweeting or liking on social media platforms. Back when “facetime” actually implied interacting with someone face to face. And not showing your face meant you were either ashamed or told not to be present in a space or event as in “you better not show face here again.” If someone defied that warning, they got a “you got a lot of nerve showing your face here” reaction.
Ever needed a recipe, home remedy, natural cleaning product, hair product, or know who has been born/graduated/married/divorced/diagnosed/died, moved away, moved back, moved on, or just updated on how your great uncle’s youngest daughter’s husband’s grandmother fared in her recent hip replacement, because remember I told you she had the first one done two years ago? Then ask a member of the Black Woman Network.
Depending on the age of the participating Black women, their depth of knowledge reflects their collective richness in wisdom. And make no mistake: they’ve seen it and heard it all and in their combined experienced, they’ve done it all. We may laugh at the refusal of older Black women to abandon outdated technology and upgrade to modern conveniences that younger generations cannot live without, but nothing’s really new under the sun. No matter how fancy and high tech we think we are, we’re still the same human beings who used to huddle together in caves around a fire, subjected to the same shortcomings and fragilities as we always have been.
As a consequence of being brought to this country in chains, Black women learned the intimate details of the human condition from slave to enslaver. Fusing traditions they’d learned from their homeland with survival strategies in their strange land, the network regularly updated and not just at 2 AM. For the first couple of centuries, knowledge couldn’t be written down since literacy for them was illegal. Imagine how much wisdom has been lost when the minds which housed such treasure troves died.
Yet, the Black Woman Network persisted.
Throughout the constant gaslighting of not having souls to not having the intellectual capacity to not having citizenship to not having the vote to not having property to not having credit to not having agency to not having…they had one another.
Generations upon generations of Black Woman Network motherwit. Against so many odds. Working at least twice as hard to get half as much. Whether her contributions were trivialized or in some unbelievable instances, even criminalized, I honor my own mother and the network of mothers who came before her for minding everyone’s business and ensuring we progressed.