Listening on Purpose: Three Mothers, Three Daughters, and 100 Years of Black Womanhood
This year marks 100 years since Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week in 1926 — the precursor to what we now celebrate as Black History Month. For Listening on Purpose, we wanted to honor that centennial by looking at how Black women’s lives have changed across those generations, and where the work still continues.
The format was intentional: three mother-daughter pairs, sitting together in honest conversation about what it has meant — and what it means now — to live and navigate the world as a Black woman in America.
The Women at the Table
The three pairs brought decades of community leadership between them.
Lisa Wood sat alongside her daughter Whittney Wood-Gaines, who has been the driving force behind Black History Month Columbus.
Rosslyn King — who has led community choirs in Columbus for over 30 years, co-founded Compuworld, and received the Beloved Community Award for her years of work on behalf of racial equality — sat alongside her daughter Michelle Mulimba, the entrepreneur behind Stunna’s and the sold-out From Kenya With Love cultural dinner series.
Stephanie Carmer, who has served as NAACP (WIN) Chairwoman, president of the Bartholomew County Democratic Party, and a board member for Advocates for Children, sat alongside her daughter Laura Carmer.
These are women whose work spans civil rights advocacy, education, entrepreneurship, faith leadership, and community organizing. And on Thursday evening, they were there as mothers and daughters — talking about their lives.
Coming Prepared to Listen
The event asked something of its audience before they arrived. Attendees were encouraged to listen to podcast episodes featuring Austin Channing Brown, author of I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness and her latest book, Full of Myself: Black Womanhood and the Journey to Self-Possession. Brown’s work explores what it means to be a Black woman striving to live fully in a world that often demands her silence, her labor, and her conformity — and what it looks like to choose self-possession instead.
That framework set the tone for the evening as panelists spoke from their own lives, with Brown’s language and ideas as a shared starting point. You can listen to each of the episodes below:
Putting Out Fires and Dancing Among the Flames: Austin Channing Brown on the Work and Joy of Being "Full of Myself" from For The Love With Jen Jatmaker Podcast
Becoming Full of Yourself | Austin Channing Brown from We Can Do Hard Things
How to Be Full of Yourself: Radical Acceptance and the Freedom to Choose Joy with Austin Channing Brown from Slay Girl Slay
Austin Channing Brown (9) - Foreboding Joy, Full of Myself from The Enneagram Journey
Then and Now: Two Generations, Two Americas
The mothers on the panel were born in the 1950s. They grew up during or just after legal segregation and the height of the Civil Rights Movement. They lived through Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They experienced Jim Crow laws firsthand — particularly in the South — and the overt, legalized racial discrimination that defined daily life for Black Americans in that era.
Their daughters were born in the 1980s. Formal segregation had ended, but they grew up during the era of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs. They came of age in a post-Reagan era shaped by neoliberal economic policies that widened inequality while the explicit language of racism receded from public life. The racism they navigated was structural and systemic rather than written into law — harder to name, harder to point to, but no less present.
That distinction shaped the entire conversation. The mothers experienced legalized racial apartheid. The daughters face structural inequality within a system that is formally “equal.” Hearing those two realities described side by side — by women in the same family — made the continuity and the change tangible in a way that a textbook can’t.
What the Conversation Opened Up
The panelists spoke openly about discomfort, resilience, and the ongoing work of navigating systems that were not built for them — sparking broader dialogue with the audience.
One audience member named the gap currently felt between generations who have navigated these systems and the younger generation coming up behind them — and how the people who have already lived through and done this work have something essential to pass forward.
That point connected directly to the evening’s central message: it takes generations to make a change, but only when we are brave enough to talk and speak up. The mothers on the panel have been speaking up for decades. Their daughters are continuing the work in new contexts and new systems. And the conversation itself is part of how that generational knowledge gets passed forward.
100 Years of Telling Our Own Stories
When Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926, he did it because Black history was being systematically excluded from the American story. One hundred years later, that work isn’t finished. Events like Listening on Purpose carry that mission forward — not just by teaching history, but by creating space for Black women to tell their own stories, in their own words, to a community that shows up ready to listen.
The call to action from the evening is simple: show up. Be interested. Be empathetic. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. That’s how understanding grows, and that’s how communities change.
Thank you to Lisa Wood and Whittney Wood-Gaines, Rosslyn King and Michelle Mulimba, and Stephanie Carmer and Laura Carmer for their honesty, vulnerability, and willingness to share their lives with our community. These are strong, resilient, and kind women who continue to make Columbus better.
About Black History Month Columbus: Black History Month Columbus is about celebrating Black culture, telling the true stories of Black history, and honoring the legacy and accomplishments of the Black community. Join us as we are creating a momentum for community healing through inspiring and educational experiences, and we warmly invite our neighbors from all walks of life to participate ♥
