‘Force Feeding’ Helps Mothers, Daughters Lock In on Values

Saying that she is fortunate to have even one parent--her mother--and that her mom is the most important part of her life was easy for Kemba Miles. Believing it wasn’t.

But it didn’t take long for the 14-year-old to understand her mother’s struggles; it happened almost overnight, in the basement of a church in Southwest Los Angeles.

“I was listening to the skit of a mother talking so calmly to her daughter and it reminded me of me and my mother,” Kemba said. “Only thing is we yell, we don’t always talk. But I realized how much she means to me and how important it is for parents and their kids to talk to each other and work things out together.”

For Kemba and 50 other girls and mothers, the night they spent in the 10th Urban Youth Lock-In at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church on Friday was filled with lessons. In play and in pointed discussions, they took on subjects that they, as black women, contend with now and may contend with in the future: respecting themselves and their bodies, single-parenthood, teen-age pregnancy and peer pressure.

Rev. Cecil L. (Chip) Murray began holding the youth lock-ins--he actually locked the doors to make sure young men stayed during all-male sessions--two years ago. He said he started the program to “force feed them some positive values,” to give them strength to ward off drugs, gangs and apathy.

There’s nowhere better to do that, Murray said, than the church.

The Right Place

“We can’t appeal to them through their homes, because they are divided,” he said. “We can’t go through their schools, because they’re battle grounds. And not from community organizations because they don’t have the resources. Here we have over 4,000 in our congregation who live in the neighborhoods and see the problems every day. They don’t want the kids to become another one of the statistics.”

Dr. Ralph Dawson, head of the lock-in programs and director of counseling at Cal State Los Angeles, recently acquired a grant of $51,000 from the office of Criminal Justice Planning to extend the lock-ins to A.M.E. churches in San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco and Fresno, beginning in January.

Friday’s session was the church’s first all-female program involving the parents. Participants split into groups of 12--daughters apart from mothers--when the 15-hour retreat began about 7 p.m. Volunteer counselors guided the discussions, beginning by asking the women and girls to talk about their most embarrassing moments and moving on to discuss other issues.

“You discover that you are pregnant,” a 12-year-old girl read from an index card of prepared skits. “You are not sure what to do, but you do know that you want the baby.”

“Well, do I have to keep the baby?” she replied. “If I had to I would try and stay in school--to finish high school. And then get a job, I guess. But I don’t know if I would keep the baby.”

Talks about similar subjects continued into the early morning, when the daughters and mothers were reunited.

“The talks and skits really opened my eyes to the understanding, patience and open-mindedness you must have in order to be a good parent,” said Shon Brown, a parent.

The first lock-in was held in November, 1986, for 30 teen-age boys and girls from the church’s congregation. Since then it has included as many as 300 participants from Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. After each lock-in, participants are asked to promise to stay free from drugs and gangs for 90 days.