Say It Plain"

Dear Rev Frobes:

My husband, Joel, and I enjoyed this evening's program, "Say It Plain". Each one of the speakers was inspiring. But the one I most identified with was Jesse Jackson. Jesse Jakson ran for president in 1987. I am originally from Chicago, I remember that speech. My mother died in 1988. My mother, Louise Ashford, was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised by her grandparents. Her mother died when she was two years old. When she came to Chicago in the Thirties with four children, jobs were very hard to find. My dad took any job he could get. My mother did domestic work. My dad died when I was five years old. By this time my mother had five children living at home. My mother and my aunt Geneva worked very hard for us. We were poor, but no one would ever have known it. She raised us like middle-class children, we attended church, we were all baptized Baptist. My mother and my aunt stood in the cold waiting on buses to make a good life for us, the best that they could. She always told us to keep our hands in God's hand and to hold our heads up. Her desire was to be a Gospel singer or an opera singer. If it wasn't for the values that my mother instilled in me, I would not be the person that I am today. No one of importance knew my mother, but she had a name and she was respected by everyone that met her. My mother married again and bought a home. She lived to see me win a beauty contest and she lived to see me in the Chicago Tribune, in a fashon ad for Carson, Pirie, Scott. She lived to see me in two editions of Ebony magazine and to sing at the Civic Center Festival downtown in Chicago. My mother is not known to the general public. I am not known to the general public. But I am determined through the Grace of God, to make some of my mother's dreams come true with the things I am doing now. I have been fortunate to meet some important people, but I have not reached the goal that I would like to reach, and that is to reach out and help the people that I am working with and anyone I meet along the way. I am determined to keep Ashford, my maiden name, alive. That way my mother's life will not be in vain and her name, Louise Ashford, will be known through her baby daughter, Delores Ashford Pownall.

with love
God bless
Delores and Joel Pownall

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Site Name : The Time is Now | Air America Radio
Full Name : Delores A Pownall