More Than A Magazine, A Movement
It’s been just over a year since we launched Front and Center—our series centering the low-income Black women of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust guaranteed income project in Jackson, Miss.
From the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, to the cruelty of Mississippi state legislators who refuse to expand postpartum Medicaid access, the disregard displayed toward Black women shows us that our work here is not done.
As a Black woman in Mississippi, I know how difficult it is to navigate the road to motherhood. With the recent decision by the state legislature’s House Republicans to deny postpartum care to women, Mississippi continues to demonstrate a lack of regard for the health of mothers—particularly Black women.
Despite the ongoing battles that have been fought to uplift the issues of the maternal health crisis in Mississippi, politicians continuously refuse to center the needs of mothers. And the refusal is cavalier and cruel.
Almost 50 years after its founding, Ms. is continuing its commitment to inclusive feminism with a new series called Front and Center—featuring pieces written by the women of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust. The program provides more than 100 Black mothers living in extreme poverty in Jackson, Miss., a guaranteed income of $1,000 a month for a year.
Beginning Thursday, you’ll hear first-hand about their struggles, their children, their work, their relationships and their dreams for the future.
We wanted to test what would happen if we empowered Black women to be the authors of their own lives—with the understanding that they, and they alone, know what their families need. We wanted to explore what would happen if institutional power and resources were used in the service of Black women and not for their confinement and destruction.
