Mama Joyce's Memorial
Donation protected
My Mama, Joyce Sanders was a rebel.
Born in rural Georgia the daughter of sharecroppers,
the youngest of four. She was ahead of her time. Migrating to New York at the age of 6, she would be deprived a proper education by the New York Public School System, labeled as "slow" and delegated to the slow learning classes. So, instead she went to night school, where she learned stenography and to type 60+ words per minute. She turned those skills into a secretarial career that was highlighted with long term employment at First National City and Manpower. After I graduated high school, Mama tested for her GED and passed it, on the first try. She then enrolled in Toro College in New York, and went on to earn a Bachelors degree. Eventually, she was hired by the very same public school system that tried to stifle her dreams.
Throughout her life Mama was a health enthusiast, juicing and eating organic long before those words were part of our vernacular. She owned a juicer in the late 50's and was eating raw by the 80's.
Mama also stayed on a path of enlightenment and knowledge. An avid reader, a consummate teacher Baptized Pentecostal (COOLGIC), a practicing member of The Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrews and the Ausar Auset Society. She spent a year in Uganda, East Afrika with the Serulanda Spiritual Foundation. There, she met members of the Radha Soami Satsang faith and upon returning to America became an initiate, practicing yoga and meditation.
In the last decades of her life Mama taught pre-school at St. Marks in Harlem, where she taught hundreds of children to read, prior first grade.
Mama earned the respect of her peers and the love of her community. She didn't just survive the assaults of poverty, racism, sexism and ignorance that plague the descendants of Afrikan people in America, she prospered. She lived a Great and Mighty Walk.
Please help me to send her home.
Born in rural Georgia the daughter of sharecroppers,
the youngest of four. She was ahead of her time. Migrating to New York at the age of 6, she would be deprived a proper education by the New York Public School System, labeled as "slow" and delegated to the slow learning classes. So, instead she went to night school, where she learned stenography and to type 60+ words per minute. She turned those skills into a secretarial career that was highlighted with long term employment at First National City and Manpower. After I graduated high school, Mama tested for her GED and passed it, on the first try. She then enrolled in Toro College in New York, and went on to earn a Bachelors degree. Eventually, she was hired by the very same public school system that tried to stifle her dreams.
Throughout her life Mama was a health enthusiast, juicing and eating organic long before those words were part of our vernacular. She owned a juicer in the late 50's and was eating raw by the 80's.
Mama also stayed on a path of enlightenment and knowledge. An avid reader, a consummate teacher Baptized Pentecostal (COOLGIC), a practicing member of The Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrews and the Ausar Auset Society. She spent a year in Uganda, East Afrika with the Serulanda Spiritual Foundation. There, she met members of the Radha Soami Satsang faith and upon returning to America became an initiate, practicing yoga and meditation.
In the last decades of her life Mama taught pre-school at St. Marks in Harlem, where she taught hundreds of children to read, prior first grade.
Mama earned the respect of her peers and the love of her community. She didn't just survive the assaults of poverty, racism, sexism and ignorance that plague the descendants of Afrikan people in America, she prospered. She lived a Great and Mighty Walk.
Please help me to send her home.
Organizer
Kwabena Dinizulu
Organizer
Indianapolis, IN
