Editor’s Note:

The providential intersect of our planning and God’s timing at The Mudroom is, for us, a never-ending source of awe. Stepping into February, we find ourselves here once again, as we simultaneously unveil our monthly theme (the virtue of stability) alongside a new series: Her Voice, Her Story: Beholding a History of Black Women in America.

The aim of this series is simple: to honor the unfiltered voices of Black women through their own words and work.

And so we witness God’s grafting together of two essential entities—both grounding us as Tammy Perlmutter (Founder and Curator) describes it—by “putting down roots within a hyper-mobile culture.” We hope you’ll journey with us as we dig deeper!

To God be ever the glory,

-Nichole Woo, for The Mudroom

***

Just days before Juneteeth, in the summer of 1934, vocalists Alberta Bradford and Becky Elzy recorded this song—years after their enslavement on two Louisiana plantations—and years before Dr. Martin Luther King concluded his “I Have a Dream” speech with these same words.

For more information on Alberta Bradford and Becky Elzy, including their photographs, click here for the Library of Congress.

For more of Bradford and Elzy’s work, recorded by John and Alan Lomax, click here.

*Her Voice, Her Story image created for The Mudroom by Sakura.

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Nichole Woo

Writer at The Narrows

Nichole Woo calls the Rockies home, where she writes at the confluence of belonging and a life that nudges her to the edges. She’s been the only girl on the team, the fumbling foreigner in the coffee shop, and the only mom she knows that coexists with an OCD diagnosis and a dirty kitchen. Nichole is the executive editor and podcast producer here at The Mudroom. If she's not playing on mountain edges, she's writing on her deck where her hair no longer looks like this. George Pig (Peppa) is her blorbo. Connect with Nichole at her website, The Narrows, or on the socials.

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