Power Sisters Academy

I was raised in a working-class racially segregated community on Detroit’s east side. My mother was 16 in 1969 when she gave birth to my brother. I was born 13 months later in 1970. My father was 17 when he became a father and 18 when he became my mother’s husband. My parents were bussed to an all-white high school in Detroit and upon discovering my mother’s first pregnancy she was forced to leave school, and when officials discovered she was pregnant with me my father was forced out. My parents are far removed from their days as “drop-outs” and their marriage has resulted in four children and nine grandchildren. As a child I remember quietly sitting in the back of a room in a church basement while my parents attended GED preparation classes. Both went on to college. My mother is a registered nurse and my father recently retired from Chrysler after 38 years. I know that my parents’ success is exceptional and that their steep climb out of poverty required hard work and a network of support. But the possibilities embedded in their story illustrates that a sound education is a poor young mother’s best opportunity for a second chance at success.

I came of age at the height of the crack epidemic devastating impact on urban communities. My teen years were spent juggling school and trying to make sense of the destruction of my community. It went from working class to high poverty in less than 10 years. After losing 25 peers to violence in four years, I became active with Save Our Sons and Daughters. I marched on crack houses, tutored younger children and planned the first convening of Detroit Summer, a peace summit to end gun violence. My involvement with SOSAD gave me hope and empowered me to believe that I can offer meaningful solutions to large problems.

When I was 22 year-old new mother, I applied to law school and when my son was 10 months old, he and I moved to Syracuse so that I could attend school. I had no housing or job and had I actually focused on what I lacked I probably would have stayed in Detroit. My housing problem was solved when one of my sorority sisters let me to stay with her. I stayed for two months until I found affordable housing. Her generosity informs my belief that sometimes finding unorthodox solutions to support young mothers move toward success can positively transform their lives.

As an attorney in Brooklyn Family Court I wedded my personal experience to the professional. There representing teen mothers in foster care and in them I saw my mother and in their babies I saw myself. Yet something was different – their motivation seemed dampened and the hurdles that they had to overcome were higher. Their lives were marred by education failure, incarceration, abuse, addiction and joblessness. Most times the girls lost their babies to the foster care system because issues that might have been easily addressed at the community level. Despite my best efforts as an advocate I could only give them so much as I had other clients who needed my attention. So bringing all of me to bear, I launched The Brooklyn Young Mothers' Collective.