The group met at noon Saturday in the Banneker Community Center as part of a series of wisdom circles.
The wisdom circles, a type of public conversation forum, were promoted by the Bloomington Community and Family Resources Department in honor of Congressman John Lewis’ visit this week.
Stephanie Power-Carter, this particular circle’s organizer, had her son eight years ago.
She said when he was young, there was a group of women who would get together with their children to do things like Christmas caroling and taking trips to the park. They would also help by babysitting for each other. Now, she said, she does not feel that same sense of community.
“I was really trying to engage women in the community,” Power-Carter said. “For us to get a sense of what the needs are, hear from people who have kids in the district, some of the challenges that they’ve had, and try to see if this is something that they want, I really think, for me, it’s about the kids; our kids, they really need to see positive role models.”
“And they need to have peers,” Judge Valeri Haughton-Motley said.
At schools in Monroe County, black children do not necessarily get to hang out with other black children, several of the women said. It can be difficult for them to make friends at school, so they sometimes feel isolated, the mothers said.
Power-Carter asked what advice they would give to a woman with young children who was new to Bloomington.
Haughton-Motley suggested getting children involved in extracurricular activities, sending them to summer camps in predominantly black areas and visiting relatives. Others advised watching plays and movies and reading books.
Several women mentioned the lack of a black gathering in Bloomington. There used to be a soulful evening in the park called Soul Food Picnic, but then it became the Multicultural Fest.
“Bloomington is interesting — when you want to do something black, people almost take offense, like you’re excluding people,” Power-Carter said.
“It didn’t used to be that way,” Carol Stokes, who has lived in Bloomington for more than 30 years, said.
“I remember when we put up a Black Lives Matter sign, people were like, ‘Well, what about everybody else?’” Power-Carter said. “Because I’m talking about my blackness does not keep you from talking about you.”
The consensus of the group was to form a new soulful food picnic for families.
“It was a much easier place to live here, to be a mother here, to have kids in the school here, when you had those connections, when you’re not so isolated,” Power-Carter said. “For us to live here, we have to be connected to the community.”
