I spoke yesterday morning at the funeral of Christine Scott Davenport. She died suddenly of a heart attack on November 10.
Christine never got rich, and she wasn’t particularly famous, but her life was incredibly full, busy, and impactful.
She grew up in Kingstree, South Carolina, where her father was a sharecropper who organized neighboring sharecroppers to advocate for a fair share of what they produced.
She graduated from Claflin University in South Carolina, and went on to earn her Master’s Degree from Morgan State. She taught middle school science for 35 years, and served as a high school administrator for another seven, both in Anne Arundel County Public Schools.
She launched or led local chapters of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc., and The Continental Societies, Inc.
She also served as Coordinator for the Homeless Shelter at the House of Hope, as an Adjunct Professor of Biology at Sojourner-Douglass College in Annapolis, and as Chair of the Anne Arundel County Democratic Central Committee.
And she served as a devoted mother to Fred and Ashleigh, and grandmother to Addyson and Amira. Her husband Fred preceded her in death 35 years ago.
I am devoting this entire Weekly Letter to Christine Davenport because she is the medicine that can heal us.
We are isolated - she connected us. We are discouraged - she encouraged us, including me and many others to run for public office. And everything she did and said was positive. No time for negativity.
She was raised to serve her community, and she applied herself to that task constantly. It was just how she lived, and it was the source of her smile and strength.
A lot of people are scared right now. The institutions of our federal government are being dismantled in a way that threatens our healthcare, our housing, our schools, our jobs, and our freedoms.
I’ve watched people who thought they were safe in this country struggling to make sense of it all, desperately trying to navigate, losing strength, and faltering.
And I’ve watched people like Christine Davenport — strong Black women who have seen injustice and marched for a better future every day of their lives, opening their arms and embracing the rest of us, showing us a path forward, and welcoming us to the struggle.
And when they sing, “We shall overcome someday,” they mean all of us.
Rest in peace, Christine Scott Davenport. We’ll take it from here.
Until next week…