Mary Eleanor Rhodes Hoover

This summer, my family buried one of the greatest African women to grace this planet. My Aunt Mary. You can google her name and see all the stuff she did. She was a pioneer in literacy, a leader in the thinking about Black Linguistics (Ebonics), a revolutionary educator, an awesome mom, etc. She was deep. Look her up for yourself. I want to take some time and space to tell you who she was to me.
Auntie was my other mother. There are a few women who I can say mothered me (my mom Brendah, my Stepmother, Hope, my best friends moms) but no one was like my Aunt Mary. She was, beside my mom, my first teacher. She had me reading and writing at age two. It is probably because of her, that I am a writer today.

**CORRECTION**

My mom, Brendah taught me to read and write, not my aunt Mary. My mom is also an excellent writer and if talent is genetic then I got whatever talent I have with words from her. My memory is really faulty and sometimes I misremember things....Sorry Mom. You're an awesome mom. You always have been.


Okay that's enough of that.
My Aunt Mary.
It's been a while and so now I can write about it. My Aunt Mary passed away this summer, and I tell you she was a giant. She was one of those people who everyone knows, she was often called on to speak about Ebonics and/or literacy. Aunt Mary was a genius. You can google her and read about all that other stuff online somewhere else. I want to write about who she was to me. I read her obit at the funeral. It was really long, I like to talk and by the time I finished reading it, I was tired. She did a lot for a lot of people. Spent her whole life serving African people worldwide, but like I said, you can read all about that somewhere else. I want to tell you, who ever reads this, what she meant to me.
Aunt Mary always, always, always believed in me. She taught me to read and write at the age of two, thus kickstarting my lifelong love of learning. My cousins used to joke that my favorite word was "why?" and it was probably because "why?" leads to the best reading, the best conversations, the best of a lot of things starts with "why?" Mary taught me to always question, even if the person you were asking was an elder. It is all in the way you ask the question, not the question you ask.
She never judged me. Even when I was terrible, just screwing up and running around acting like an asshole, she had a way of letting me know that I was not acting in the best interests of myself, our family or our people, that was not disparaging. It wasn't that she wasn't the kind of person to call someone out. There's a lot of people out there who didn't like her precisely because she would call them on their shit. Preferrably in public. No for me, she knew that I would just get defensive and shut down. She was a fierce black nationalist, and she loved African people with a love shown by few people these days. Which leads me to the next thing-service.
Aunt Mary told me once "If you are not on this earth to serve Black people and you see the state that we are in, what are you here for?! If you are not serving to uplift your people, you are weighing us all down!"
This message was communicated so clearly at her homegoing/funeral. She did so much for us, I can only hope to pick up some of her work.