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African American Mothers Find Community With B-N 'Jack and Jill' Chapter

Women at event
Courtesy
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Jack and Jill of America
Members of the Bloomington-Normal chapter of Jack and Jill of America.

When Memuna Lee moved to Bloomington-Normal in 2008, she felt out of place.

Making her way to a new neighborhood and finding companions was difficult, until she found a community for families just like hers through the Bloomington-Normal chapter of a national organization, Jack and Jill of America.

During the Great Depression, African American families faced discrimination and were forced to attend different schools and social clubs than their white counterparts. But in 1930, 21 mothers came together to create an organization that would serve as a safe haven for their families and give social, cultural and educational opportunities to their children.

Memuna Lee
Memuna Lee

“I moved here from California and I found myself in the same spot. When you move into a community where friendships and families are well established, you can find yourself on the outside of things. Jack and Jill gave me an opportunity to be part of a community of mothers who have similar interests and aspirations for themselves and for their children,” said Lee.

Starting with a group of about 70, African American mothers in Bloomington-Normal reached out to the national organization in 2001 to express their longing for a sense of community and acceptance. 

“Jack and Jill provided that outlet to those mothers and back in that point of time it was a smaller group of African Americans, so there was a desire there to be able to connect with each other and provide each other's children with opportunities to have mentoring and do activities that maybe weren't part of the initial group of people that belong to the private clubs,” said Lee, who is now president of the current chapter.

Forming a group of professional women, members held a standard of leadership in order to show their children what they could ultimately become in the future. 

“They held that standard up not just for children of color, for everybody, but especially for children of color, specifically African American children because they don't always see images of themselves in those positions where they can achieve,” Lee said. “So here we give a counternarrative to the negative stories that are often put out, and we show that we have a legacy of achievement and we stand on that legacy while extending that throughout the community through our kids.”

Today the organization has over 200 chapters nationwide and represents more than 40,000 African American families. Catering to kids ages 2-19, members of Jack and Jill use their platforms to promote children's rights through child development, service projects, and programs that provide a medium of contact to stimulate their growth.

While COVID-19 has stood in the way of kids going to school and being with friends, Lee said the children in her group have still found a way to connect. 

“Necessity is the mother of invention and I saw the teens in our group put together their own Zoom meeting, invited each other and ran it on their own. These are 14, 15, 16-year-old children putting their own meetings together and we are all connected on a social app so we’re just watching as they're all talking to each other and it’s amazing to see the children leading themselves,” she said. 

In the future, Lee said she is sure that the kids will continue their legacy and have their own chapter. 

“We've given them a foundation so by the time they're teens, they’ll basically run their own chapter. They’re already creating their own goals, holding themselves accountable, and they just do it,” she said. “To continue their social activities, they set up by Zoom, they did a Google Hangout, somebody had a TikTok thing going on where they put up these video clips of dancing and things like that, so they’re very supportive of each other. They're still figuring out ways to connect and I think it's really sweet.”

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Tiffani Jackson is a reporting intern at WGLT and a student at Illinois State University's School of Communication. She started working at WGLT in summer 2019.
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