ABSTRACT
African-American women found their social identities constantly shaped by dominant discourses on race, gender, and class, a phenomenon that Collins (2000) has referred to as intersecting oppressions. Ideologies defining what constitutes good and bad mothering are embedded within these same discourses. An archaeological exploration of mothering, then, provides an opportunity to meaningfully discuss the convergence of class, race, and gender identities in African-American communities without reverting to privileging one aspect of social identity over another. In this work, I have attempted to present what I see as two differing scales of agency. African-American activist organizations combatted stereotypes about black mothering and womanhood, through their writings and through collective political action. These discourses influenced, directly and indirectly, the experiences and attitudes of families and individuals and helped shape the ways they acted on behalf of their families and communities. The mothering and the motherwork performed by the Perrymans was part of a politicized and, I would argue, transformative agency exercised by African-American families who saw claiming their privileges of parenting as a means of staking a claim for other social and political rights.
