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Transcript
My name is Montia Brock. I was born at McGee Hospital. I was born and raised in the Hill District. The neighborhood where I grew up… I was born up Sugar Top, which is Schenley Heights on paper, but we refer to it as Sugar Top in the house that my mom was born and raised in, that her mom was born and raised in, and that her mom had gifted to her after she married, and from there we moved to the projects because my mom had me really young. We lived on Francis Court, which was a housing development that’s now vacant land. Then we moved to Chauncey Drive, which is still standing. And then we moved to Whiteside Rd. which looks very different than it did from when I was a kid. Overall, my neighborhood on paper wasn’t the safest place, but it felt very safe to me. I tell people all the time I lived in the projects, but I grew up across the street from a swimming pool and a tennis court and a baseball field. So I had a lot more than what most impoverished kids would have as well as next to my family church. My childhood was wonderful. I can point out bad things that happened, but I’m going to talk about all the great things as now officially in my mid 30s. I grew up again with teen parents. My mom was 15 when she had me, my dad was 16. But I had all of their parents. I had my great grandparents, and it wasn’t until I went away to college that I realized that some kids never get a chance to meet their grandparents. So I had probably like 5 grandmas, 6 granddads, lots and lots of aunts and uncles and cousins, so I was raised by a lot of people with a lot of love by my community. Again, I had young parents and they continued to have children, so I did a lot of helping and supporting and raising those kids. My younger siblings- I have eight siblings total between both my parents. Growing up in the projects was rough. You know, my mom made- always made it work. My dad- I always had my dad, so I felt like I was very fortunate for that too. I grew up with a lot of kids who didn’t have their dad, but we weren’t rich by any means, but we made it work and.. I mean, growing up on Whiteside was rough. It was rough. I mean, I could remember getting phone calls and folks saying, like, keep the kids inside because they gonna come down here and shoot it up, y’all know, they’re retaliating or whatever the situation was. But I mean, in a nutshell, like I was very, very covered and taken care of. So a strong woman to me… that is such a contradictory statement to me. As a black woman, I try to stay away from the strong woman trope because it is killing us. Let me say that. It is not our responsibility to always be strong and to save the world. A strong person to me is someone who can set boundaries, and who knows when to center themselves and take care of themselves. Black women ain’t here to save everybody. I have plenty of role models, but the first one comes to mind for me, it’s probably both of my grandmothers, my mom’s dad, and my dad’s dad. My dad’s dad, who I referred to as Nana, her maiden name was Darrel-Arnold. She died a month into my freshman year of college, probably one of the stronger people that I’ve ever known. She grew up on Elmore Square. She graduated from 5th Ave. High School. She was the 1st in her family to, like, own a property and buy a house, and she bought the house up Sugar Top, which was around the corner from my mom’s house, and that’s how my mom and my dad met. I have pictures of them in preschool together. They’ve known each other their whole life. And then my mom’s mom’s, my meemaw, both of these women were the oldest of all their siblings, took care of everybody. My meemaw served over 30 years on a police force. She retired as a homicide detective. So people see her and they like revere her and they respect her. But I know this silly, goofy woman who, like, wants to hear about my dates and sings rap music with me. Like, people don’t know that side of her. Her favorite new song is the Glow-rilla and that, like, that’s her jam and people be like “Meemaw know that song?” I’m like “Yeah.” So those two women, I’ve watched them both climb up the ladder of whatever they were doing. Take care of folks, become trusted and respected people in the community, like, I’ve legit seen killers in my community revere my grandmother, who’s a cop, right? And hood guys are not supposed to like cops, but then talk about how much they respect my grandma because of who her character and who she is as a person, and because they can trust her because she protects people. How do I empower myself and the women around me? I pause. We live in this world of instant, go, go, go. Sometimes just taking a break and resting and giving myself a time to think is how I empower myself. I try not to make brash or sudden decisions for the sake of other people. How I empower other women? I listen to them. Something doesn’t always have to be said. Sometimes you just need to listen to people. Breaking down barriers for women, I’m going to go back to what I said before, listen to them, listen to women, listen to black women. A lot of what’s happening, a lot of what’s to come, black women have been saying. We’ve been pointed out, we’ve been talked about. Listen to black women.