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Three generations of black mothers reflect on the importance of family
Yvonne Neal, her daughter Roberta Smith, and Roberta's daughter Latoya Smith have a lot in common.They share similar physical traits – a smile that extends all the way to their dark-brown eyes. And the three generations of black mothers and daughters grew up in Loudoun in similar environments: A “country” living, Roberta calls it, with lots of siblings, lots of children, and most important, lots of love.
Each of these women has faced challenges. But each has persevered with her mother's help.
The first generation
Yvonne Neal, 75, grew up in Ashburn before the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.
“We didn’t have a large house,” she said. Yvonne and her 16 brothers and sisters shared two bedrooms. “There was a boys' room and a girls' room.”
As the daughter of a farmer who also worked on the railroad, Yvonne said there was never much money in the house, but there was always a lot of love.
Yvonne, who now lives in Sterling, said she and her sisters always helped their mother in the kitchen, canning jams and fruits, and cleaning dishes.
“I remember my mother and I, we would have fish. And I went to turn the fish and they crumbled apart. My mother said, ‘I guess we’re having scrambled fish tonight,” she said between chuckles.
Yvonne attended Douglass High School in Leesburg, an all-black school in Loudoun before desegregation.
"[Discrimination] didn’t leave its mark on me,” she said, adding that she didn't see racism as an issue in Loudoun. Blacks and whites didn't mix much back then, Yvonne remembered, adding that she lived about three miles away from her nearest neighbor.
She graduated from the four-classroom high school in 1952, a year after a class action suit had been filed in the U.S. District Court against the Topeka, Kan., Board of Education – a suit later known as Brown v. Board of Education.
After graduating high school, Yvonne married Robert Clifton Neal. The pair had eight biological children and one adopted child. Roberta is her second youngest.
“We’ve always tried to support each other,” Yvonne said about her family.
The second generation
Roberta Smith, a 44-year-old living in Ashburn, remembers her childhood fondly.
“It was pretty much a country life,” she said. “When we lived in Vienna, we also had boys' and girls' rooms. I never felt we were poor because we always had food and cloths. We always had love.”
When Roberta found out she was pregnant at 15 with her first child, Latoya, Roberta had a lot of worries and even more questions.
However, she never questioned that she would have her mother's support.
“She's always been there for me,” Roberta said. “She said as long as I was working and I was going to school, she would baby-sit.”
Roberta attended Loudoun County High School until 1982, when she dropped out to take care of Latoya.
That same year, Roberta's father died. Yvonne and Roberta had to lean on each other even more since they were both single mothers.
“We never had a lot, but we had a lot of love,” Roberta said of this time. “Family is important.”
More than 20 years passed, and in 2004 Roberta received her General Education Diploma, one of her life’s highlights, she said. With "mama’s" help, she said, she was able to achieve this goal.
“When I was younger it was always, 'Mama don't know what she's talking about.' But as I've gotten older, I can see she was right” about life, Roberta said, adding she has passed on to her children the lessons she learned from her mother.
One lesson, Roberta said, was that people, no matter what their color, are equal.
Yvonne said, “I taught my children the way I was taught about race: Look at what’s on the inside, that’s what matters.”
The third generation
Roberta’s first child, Latoya, now 28, also had to overcome the obstacles of being a teenage mother. She gave birth to her first child, Da’Shaun, when she was 16.
“I haven’t handled a lot of things very well,” Latoya said of her adolescence.
Roberta, who had to drop out of school to take care of Latoya, pushed her child to complete high school.
For Roberta this meant providing a roof and other financial needs for her teen, and taking care of her grandchild while Latoya went to school.
“I couldn’t ask for better people to raise me,” said Latoya who grew up in Sterling and Leesburg but has recently moved to Centreville.
“Education is very important to me,” she said.
Latoya has an associate’s degree from the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute, known for its Le Cordon Bleu Program. This made her grandmother very proud.
Education is something the grandmother has emphasized for her grandchildren. And it’s something Latoya has also made a priority.
“School is the way to make it in life,” Latoya said. “The way my kids talk, they want to be something.”
She said her mother and grandmother have taught her a lot, including the lesson that it’s important to finish what you start and support your family.
“[Roberta] has been through a lot of obstacles … but she always took good care of us,” Latoya said.
Part of being a good family is being there for each other, Roberta said.
“We’re a tight-knit family,” she said.
Most members of the family lives within a 30-minute drive of one another, a short enough distance to make family dinners easy to achieve.
Family is what matters most to these three generations of mothers and daughters.
“If it was just me without my family, I really don’t think I would have been able to do anything,” said Latoya. “You see a lot of people, who don’t have anybody, struggle. We don’t struggle. All I have to do is call somebody.”
Contact the reporter at hhobbs@timespapers.com
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