Back home as a child, there were so many kids that were told that they did not have a dad. Lots of mothers had to make it on their own. What made it so much sadder was that the more kids they had the more there were that had to work in the field. Most of the men had three to four groups of kids from different women, and they did not stay to take care of them. Lots of the dads just kept on moving and getting more kids. To me, the black man had no respect for his women and kids. He felt they were not his responsibility, and in a way, he was right because of the way the white man controlled them.

Right in my own family there were men that had more than one family. My granddad was one. He was so bad that he had a baby by my grandmother's best friend. This broke her heart. She was never the same after that. She was very much in love with him. Later on in life, I did get to meet that uncle. One of my uncles had two or three families. He got so good they start named the kids the same name.

Once when I went to visit Mississippi, my aunt and I were shopping when she saw a group of people. She said that they were my kinfolk. She said something that was great. She said, “You cannot take it out on the kids.”

Things did not work out for us that way. My dad disowned us and said we were not his kids. From what my mom told me, he would say this to everyone but not to her. My dad had about four set of kids, and we all seemed not to like each other. Years later, I was trying to bring our family together. I was told by one set that they did not know us and did not want to get to know us. This broke my heart, so I stopped trying to reach out.

Dad did not do anything for us. I remember wanting to be with my father, but he never did come around. Maybe if he was there, so many bad things would not have happened to me. In his last days, I had a talk with him. He did clam me as his child. My mom had to take care of us all by herself, and she had another child that was not by my dad. This mentality came from slavery. Now that I am grown, I see how messed up our black men were. They were taught and trained to do just what they did, and they got very good at it. Have they being deprogrammed from that slave frame of mind? No they have not!

When my mom moved us to Florida, there were new ways of dealing with black people and having kids. My right to have kids was taken from me by people playing God just like the slave master. A pharmaceuticals company in Homestead, Florida by the name of Dalkon Shield would insert in young black girls what we called “Loops” between the 1960's and 1970's. They were also called IUD's. See ONE LAWYER'S 25 YEAR JOURNEY: THE DALKON SHIELD SAGA. My twin and other girls that I went to school with did not have kids.

I found out about a class action lawsuit when I came back to Florida, but I was too late because the clinic that had my records was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew. I cannot say to a child you do not have a father, but I can say my master made sure of that.

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Excerpt from ONE LAWYER'S 25 YEAR JOURNEY: THE DALKON SHIELD SAGA:

"With the advent of the Lippes Loop in the 1960's, interest was rekindled in IUD's as a method of contraception. The Dalkon Shield appeared on the market in 1971. As did all IUD's then being sold, the Dalkon Shield had an attached tailstring which served two purposes. First, if the woman inserted a finger in her vagina and felt the presence of the tailstring, she was assured the IUD was in place and that she had contraceptive protection. Second, the physician utilized the string to remove the IUD by simply pulling on it. But the tailstring of the Dalkon Shield was different from that of the Lippes Loop or the Saf-T-Coil, the two most popular IUD's marketed at that time in this country. Unlike them, the Dalkon Shield had a multifilament, rather than monofilament, tailstring. The Dalkon Shield tailstring, comprised of 200 - 400 individual plastic filaments encased in a plastic sheath, bridged the gap between the uterus and the vagina."