How My Mother Built a Life Out of Nothing

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Devon Westhill became the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he learned the meaning of perseverance from the woman who raised him. His mother faced poverty, long hours, and the weight of raising a family on her own in rural Florida. Yet through every setback, she refused to let her children see defeat. Her story is one of grit and grace of a mother who built stability out of scarcity and taught her children that success isn’t handed down; it’s earned, day by day.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
And we're back with our American Stories. Up next, a
story from our True Diversity series sponsored by the great
folks at Philanthropy Roundtable, America's leading advocate for you to
support the causes you believe in. Today we meet a
partner of their campaign, Devin west Hill, the President and
General Counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity. Today he'll

(00:30):
share with us a beautiful story about the person who
impacted him the most, his mother.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
For a long time, I've been a Steve Martin fan, right, so,
all the kid that grew up in the eighties and
nineties at the height of the Steve Martin mania, I
suppose I like the quote from Steve Martin's film The
Jerk where he says.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
It was never easy for me.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I was born a poor black child. I like that
because it's a funny line because Steve Martin's white. But
for me, I liked the quote because it describes a
little bit of my past. I'm a very light skinned,

(01:22):
bright skinned, biracial black man, so I've oftentimes in my
life been asked what are you? And I've used that line.
But at the same time, it does describe the way
I think of myself. And my upbringing, you know, or
I was actually born inside of the easternmost edge of Appalachia,

(01:45):
but we didn't stay there very long at all. My
father developed a bad habit, and my mother, trying to
get him away from bad elements in that area, moved
us out of that area to Florida. Placka, Florida, which
was very very small place back then. It's still somewhat
small now, but certainly in an impoverished, almost rural kind

(02:08):
of area of north central Florida. The only thing that
was an operation there, I think at that time, was
a paper mill. But we didn't stay very long. The
marriage fell apart, and you know, we went through and
saw all these sorts of terrible things that people, no
matter their race or where they come from, when you're poor,

(02:31):
you oftentimes experience these things. We scare us, all of them.
When she was escaping her first husband, my father, and
her second husband, who was abusive and alcoholic, we're homeless
for periods of time. We lived in a batter women's
shelter I remember is where I learned how to roller skate.
We had to move into housing projects, and we moved

(02:55):
to apartment after apartment after apartment Section eight housing apartments,
and I switched schools I think almost every year until
I was in fifth grade, when I don't know through
what magic, my mother, who was raising us on a
high school diploma, was able to purchase a house. It

(03:21):
felt like we'd really hit the lottery, you know. That
was in fifth grade and for the first time, I
think for almost the first time, I went to the
same school more than one year. I'm very lucky to

(03:42):
have had the mother that I had and I still have.
My mother was relentless. One of the things that distinguishes
my mother from other people in terms of her ability
to overcome adversity is the day in day out examples
that she sent. There was no big thing that she overcame.

(04:07):
It was the ability to understand and to stay consistent
when everything was pressing against her. She raised three poor
black kids on her own with a high school diploma
as a white woman and all black communities, and to
the extent folks understand what it's like in southern black

(04:29):
communities for white women, you'll understand that it wasn't always
easy for her to have black kids and to consort
with black men in these communities. It's frowned upon. She
was mistreated many times as a result of simply being
a white woman in these black communities with black kids,
and you know that flowed to us to some extent

(04:51):
as well. But I only now realized just how difficult
it must have been for my mother, who has the
ripped you know of a god, to take three hard
headed young children, separated only by four years, all three

(05:12):
of them, and raise them by herself, with a high
school diploma, working multiple jobs all of my life. Really,
I'm just incredibly impressed by what she was able to
do by herself. You know, she worked at a fast
food restaurant called Chicken Charlie's and Platka, Florida doesn't exist anymore,

(05:33):
long gone, but you know, she'd work these long hours
and we would have to sort of be babysat. I mean,
this was before I think my sister was even a kindergarten.
We'd have to be babysat by multiple different people throughout
the day at different homes and so on and so forth,
so that she just get through adult shift. We moved
to Gainesville, Florida, where she got a better job than

(05:55):
Chicken Charlie's, which was McDonald's, our life improved. She got
a job at McDonald's and Gainsville, Florida, and moved us
into housing projects in Gainesville, Florida. She overcame, she could see,
she could see the future. She had a vision for
a better life for her and for us, so she

(06:17):
was willing to take those little baby steps. And she
knew in the aggregate that eventually we would be better off,
even if it didn't seem like it from day to day,
week to week, month to month, year to year. She
had a vision that eventually saw us climb, scratch and

(06:38):
clon away to our own house by the time you know,
I was ten or eleven or twelve years old, to
you know, having you know, one of her children become
a lawyer, be the first person to graduate from from college.
She saw this sort of vision as she could create

(07:01):
situation for us. Even though she only had high school
diploma and was trying to do this all on her own,
and did do this all on her own. It was
never going to be guaranteed that one day she would
have her own house. It was not guaranteed that one

(07:21):
day she was going to move on from working at
McDonald's to getting her college degree, which she did, to
being a licensed clinical social work, which she became, to
getting a master's degree, which she eventually did, to having
multiple cars, to having material things, to seeing her children succeed.
There was no one incident that I can point to

(07:43):
and say that was it. That's what made me think
that she had grip. It was the day to day
with no thank you, to take us from one place
to another. That is very, very different than and most
places in the world, most places in history. It's a

(08:05):
truly exceptional and unique American experience. In the American dream,
you can and should be able to advance without arbitrary barriers,
to optimize your own talents and interests and desires to
your own idea of Successess, that's why people are just

(08:27):
clamor to come to this country and always have the
simple connection to what you inherited or your birth, your race,
your lineage. Is not the sort of thing that can
advance you in life. At the same time, you know
that sort of thing is not going to hold you

(08:50):
back so long as you possess some inner merit and
value and worth. Right, it's idea that if you possess
those things, the world is your oyster, This country is
your oyster, The sky is the limit, you can go anywhere.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
And a special thanks to the Philanthropy Roundtable. Their True
Diversity Initiative encourages Americans to embrace all the qualities that
make us unique individuals, because there's so much more to
each of our stories than what's defined by a group, identity,
or other superficial traits. Devin Westill's mother's story here on
our American Stories