Revisioning the Revolution with Mable Haddock

This transcript is excerpted from a conversation between BlackFemaleProject Founder, Precious J. Stroud, and Mable Haddock.

The conversation took place late August, 2015, during the final year of the Obama Presidency, just prior to the beginning of the Trump regime; this adds a bit of context to commentary about the state of race/racialized conversations in the U.S. We join them just before the formal start of the interview, when Mable wanted to hear from Precious about her journey and the initiation of BlackFemaleProject. 

Haddock: Well I think that... Just being able to choose who I want to be, what I want to do. And making that happen. And when I listen to stories of the Black women who’ve worked in nonprofit as well as corporate spaces, and hear the stories about how their talents have been misused or not used or abused, I just realize, you know, my obstacles were different. I had plenty of obstacles to work with and against to overcome. But they were different. They were obstacles, I think, of my own choosing and that makes all the difference in the world. When you are working or you feel like you’re working for yourself, you feel like you’re working to a goal that’s larger than yourself.

I was raised in Virginia on a farm. A tobacco farm. And my father… used to work day and night, which meant we were day and night with him. And he would say, “You know, it’s a pleasure for me to work, because I’m working on my own farm. When I grew up, I worked for other people and I resent that I got paid a dollar a day or, you know, fifty cents a day, and ate at the back door and on the back porch. Now, I would gladly do that and more because I am working for myself and it makes such a difference in how you approach your work, how you approach your day, how you approach your life.”