A SUPERWoman: My Mother – Janie Luther Walker

The three of us thought that we could give our readers greater insight into who we are, and at the same time honor our mothers by each writing a tribute to the women who raised us. The idea occurred to us when Rob wrote a tribute to his mother who recently passed. Henry then wrote a tribute to his mother on April 12th. It is now my turn to write a tribute to my mother, Janie Luther Walker, who was born May 7, 1913, and transitioned on December 7, 1993. I have the good fortune of getting to submit mine on Mother’s Day Week.

I have long since gotten over my sadness over my mother’s death. I will never get over how privileged I feel in having been born to her. My mother was a strong and industrious woman, an educated woman, and also a humble and kind woman.  All of these qualities helped to shape me and my eight siblings into who we are today.  I am not biased in saying that she was an impressive woman...better yet, an impressive human being.  My mother was not only a loving mother and wife, she was also a scholar and community leader; an example to all who knew her. 

 A 1939 Elementary Education honors graduate of Langston University in Tulsa Oklahoma, at a time when few African Americans even went to college, mama was a trailblazer. She was no stranger to hard work or trials and was a master of making it look easy.  She lost her mother when she was nine and was raised by her father and step-mother. She married my dad, a farmer, in 1940.  She proved quite skilled as a farmer’s wife.  In the early days, she could dress a horse for plowing as effectively as she could create compositions or write poetry – art forms of which she was quite accomplished. Early in her motherhood, she once observed from her kitchen window, my oldest brother Luther struggling with one of the animals.  He was about nine at the time and having difficulty getting a mule to obey his commands as he attempted to plow in a nearby field. Mom set aside her household chores, went out and unhitched the mule from his plow, tied him to a tree and thoroughly whipped the animal with a large tree limb. After which, she re-hitched the animal to the plow. The animal obeyed all of Luther’s commands for the rest of the day. When there was a need, she could be found doing barnyard chores; milking cows, feeding hogs and collecting eggs, just to name a few. 

Unlike Rob, it is difficult for me to imagine my mother as ever being a great literary writer. Although

this is something that I feel she would have done well, her life was much too busy on agrarian survival activities, raising her family and serving in the community. She was first and foremost a wife and mother. I cannot recall a day during my childhood when I or my eight siblings did not have a hot breakfast, lunch or dinner.  My mother was definitely a guiding force at home and a pillar in our small community. She taught school during regular school hours and gardened one of the largest gardens in Holly Springs in the evenings.  She was my first softball coach. She was as comfortable competing in foot racing competitions as she was at teaching in the one-room school house, where I received the first six years of my formal education. She never complained about being called upon to put on a set of work clothes and supervise her children, either in her garden or at the livestock barn.  

 Mama was, socially and culturally, a bridge between the 19th and 20 Centuries. In 1965, she

returned to college and obtained a Masters in Library Science from Arkansas State Teacher’s

College in Conway. It was generally held knowledge that mama never made a school grade of less than a “B”. I grew up thinking that she had to have been one of the smartest people in the world. Of course, during my adolescence she was the only college graduate in the Holly Springs community. That added to her stature in the eyes of most residents. Her academic prowess was aspirational for me throughout my academic career, and who knows how many others she influenced just by being who she was. From my earliest memories, she told me that I was “smart”. This made me want to emulate her academic accomplishments. She was a school teacher in small rural schools throughout Conway County for more than forty years – teaching at North View Elementary and Middle School, Mt. View High School, Holly Springs Elementary, Wonder View High School, Nemo Vista High School, Center Elementary and Junior High School and Conway County Training School/East Side High School. For a period, she was also the school bus driver when she taught at North View. At the one room schoolhouse, Holly Springs Elementary she was the teacher/principal/custodian/cafeteria and recreation supervisor. Whileteaching school, never missing more than a few weeks, she gave birth to eleven children–raising nineof them toadulthood and guiding each of them through a four-year college education.  She never complained about having to teach in small, all black, underfunded and under resourced schools for a meager wage of less than $150.00 per month. No, I remember her repeating the lines from an old Negro spiritual with teary eyes, after all nine surviving children got college degrees that she “wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now!” She was a pioneer woman and, given the times, probably destined to be so. 

Mama’s most enduring quality, however, was not her scholarship.It was her commitment to her faith – Christianity. She conducted bible study with us children at home and could be found in her church every Sunday. She would be performing her responsibilities as church clerk or teaching a Sunday School class. She was also the principal architect of many of my grandfather’s sermons. My paternal grandfather was a Baptist preacher. I recall many times when my grandfather, who had a reputation as a powerful speaker, but not as a gifted writer, would come by the house and practice his sermons with my mother who served as his stenographer and sermon writer. She was also the principal writer for the community’s children, who from time to time were required to speak in church or school programs. I wish I had saved a dollar for every speech that she had ever written for one of the local kids for Easter, Christmas or some other event. It would represent a tidy sum of money.

My mother was an upstanding person.  A mother of eleven, skilled agrarian, community leader and spiritual example.  She wore a lot of hats, and wore them all very well.  Yes she was someone who today would be impressive, but considering the times...I will say that she was a SUPERWoman. You may think that it was a difficult thing for her, but based on what she said concerning those times, I believe that she enjoyed her life and believed herself to be successful. I am so grateful to have this opportunity to reflect on my mother and the impact she had on my life and the lives of others.  My heart is full with gratitude and honor that God selected Janie Luther Walker to be my mama.

Woodson and his parents on front porch of family home (1980)

A Mother's Death and Life

We all experience profound personal loss. The death of a loved one certainly qualifies as a hard cross to bear.  Rob recently lost his mother after a brief illness and a long life.  Here, he takes a moment to reflect on broader meanings of that life--JWW

Not long ago my mother died.  She was 99 years old.  My brother and I began preparing for the end sometime ago, so I’m not torn up about it.  Our family received lots of support from friends in the wake of her death.  I’ve felt embraced during a difficult time.  I’ve also been encouraged to express my feelings about larger issues I think my mother’s life raised, so this piece finds its rationale in sociology and politics.  Though she was mostly unknown, my mother’s life represented a loss for America.  I believe her time here illustrated part of the cost of race discrimination.  My view has little to do with the money she didn’t make or the fame she never had.

Electa Wiley was a teacher, scholar, and writer.  From the late 1940s to the early 1960s she taught her college major - home economics-  and she also taught English in rural, all-black schools in Arkansas.  She was good at that.  Really good.  My brother marveled at how, in retirement, former students so often stopped by our house in Hope, Arkansas or her cottage home on our family property near Nashville, Arkansas to say how she’d positively influenced their lives.  But teaching home economics and high school English, however valuable, wasn’t the highest and best use of Electa Wiley’s talents.

In the early 60s, she went to graduate school and earned a doctoral degree from the University of Arkansas, allowing her at least to ply her trade in historically black colleges.  She did that for 14 years in Arkansas and Louisiana.  However important that was, it still wasn’t the highest and best use of Electa Wiley’s talents. 

She retired to our house in Hope in 1978.  In the following years, I saw what Electa Wiley really could do.  She dedicated herself to writing, publishing volumes of poetry, appearing at literary conferences, and contributing newspaper columns on social and political issues.  I saw her passion, insight, and astounding ability to write in a way that touched hearts and stimulated minds.  But, I also saw the cost of the time she lost during those years toiling in little rural high schools, underfunded colleges, and, finally, her backyard.  I saw that, but for the timing of her birth, she would have had a chance to perform her craft in literary meccas like New York, Los Angeles, and London. 

What kept my mother from having the chance to write poems that became classics, novels that became best sellers, and screen plays that became film and television hits was, pure and simple, American race discrimination.  Born in 1919 in rural Hempstead County, Arkansas, she never dreamed of anything except teaching in a local school.  When she finished graduate school in 1964, the idea of a black woman landing on the faculty of one of America’s top public or private universities wasn’t, as she once told me, “a real possibility.”

I could look at this situation and regret missing out on the riches she might have earned in a lucrative literary career.  I could lament the fact my mother died in obscurity – appreciated by those who knew and loved her, but uncelebrated for talent exceeding many we worship.  I could complain that my mother never received the adulation of critics and audiences that venerated much lesser lights.  I do none of this because what happened isn’t about me, her, or our family.  I see the biggest loser in my mother’s fate as America itself.

This country missed out on what my mother had to offer.  I am convinced that had she not faced the racially imposed limits in place in the United States during her formative years, she would have had an opportunity to hone her craft with America’s best novelists, literary scholars, poets, and playwrights.  Her horizons wouldn’t have been constricted by considerations of what little black girls from rural Hempstead County, Arkansas can make of themselves. She could have dreamed big and shown the world what she had.

I understand my mother performed a valuable service.  The high school and college students she taught so well needed people like her.  Because she met their needs, she felt fulfilled and never regretted that fate didn’t deal her different cards.  As I’ve said in other contexts, being happy with what you have and not worrying about what you don’t have leads to really good outcomes in life.  My mother looked at things that way and, therefore, by the time of her death, she could say to herself, “Well done!”

But I wanted more for her.  I wanted her name in lights.  I wanted to see her on TV talk shows musing about books she authored and poems she composed.  I wanted her recognized on our greatest stages for people whose talent resides in using words.  I didn’t get to see that but, as I said, the fact I didn’t is as much America’s loss as mine.