BALTIMORE — The most famous mom in Baltimore is uneasy. It is noon on a Wednesday, and she is six hours into her shift driving addicts from a halfway house to a treatment center. She has only made $60 so far today, which is not nearly enough. She withdraws an eviction notice from her purse. It says she owes $1,381.50. Ten bucks an hour is not going to cut it.
If you do not know Toya Graham by name, you know her by what she did. At the apex of the Baltimore riots, as the city buckled under the weight of Freddie Gray’s controversial death, Graham strode into the maelstrom clad in a blazing yellow shirt to find her rebellious son. And when she did, she clobbered the youth, meting out the discipline that millions of Americans, watching it unfold on television, thought he deserved.
Toya Graham, who until that moment was just another struggling mother in a city full of them, became the hero of a Baltimore story without one. She was the avenging mother, determined to save her boy from social forces ravaging her community. A YouTube video of her striking her son shot past 6 million views, then 7 million, then 8 million. There was a parade of interviews — with Anderson, with Whoopi, with Gayle. Oprah called. The media crowned Graham “Baltimore’s Hero Mom” and the “Mother of the Year.”
People told her she was going to be a star. They told her she was going to get a job. She was going to anchor a reality TV show. She was going to write a book. She was going to meet Michelle Obama. And Graham believed it. Her life of struggle was over. She was Baltimore’s Mom.
Graham now sits alone at the wheel of a Ford van. She just dropped off 12 addicts at a treatment center on Broadway. She feels unmoored. So much has happened in her life, but so little has changed. She still can’t pay her bills. She still can’t escape the circumstances into which she was born.
Comments at WP:
* I don’t get it. Why should a mother expect to cash in after disciplining her son?
* The life story of Toya has many useful illustrations about life for too many in modern America. Get rich quick schemes, fleeting fame, fatherless families, struggling moms, wayward kids. The one lesson not discussed as a reason for her struggles is she has six children and a unknown number of grandchildren, most of whom have different fathers, and apparently none are active in supporting her.
I am sympathetic to her plight, but by her choices in men and having a large family she has out herself in this position. Worse, are the odds her six children will not break this cycle of poverty and poor decision-making will lead to 15 to 20 more poor children in the next generation. Add to that another 15-20 or more into her great-grandchildren’s generation.
That’s the untold future.
* So where is the useless father of this boy child that she had to smack upside the head to keep him from joining the looters and arsonists?
Child support would go a long way toward assisting with her financial situation, and the boy probably wouldn’t be acting up if there were a father in the picture.
* Most people learn early one of the most important lessons in life: If it is too good to be true, it usually is.
It’s good that this mother has finally opened her eyes to the fact that she will unlikely be successful as a celebrity, and that those that tell her this nonsense are lying.
What is terribly ironic is that even if she had spurned the aggressive celebrity news machine, they would likely have turned on her and instead of a “hero”, the story would have been reframed very differently.
* how about the kid gets a job! my father died when I was 10. I started working 20 hours year around at 13 and 40 hours heat around at 16 while going to school. Zzz doing menial work at a young age is very beneficial as it teaches you that I better work harder in school.
* Her son should have disassembled and reassembled an old electric clock radio and taken it to school, to show to his science teacher.
* Serves her right for trying to capitalize off of what she should have been doing from the start. And for those who think beating black kids is the answer then why don’t you ask the millions in prison if they were beaten by their mothers. Yep, a lot of good that did.
* Ms. Grey just attempted suicide Wed night. So evidently becoming a millionaire is not always the answer. She also must give her disgusting lawyer, Billy Murphy, at least a third of the settlement (likely more).
She is a pathetic drug addict who probably did hit Freddie while he was growing up, a lot, when she was alert enough to have a sense of who and where she was.
I worked in Head Starts and public education in Baltimore for 35 years. Smacking your child is the norm, it’s a cultural thing. Poor blacks largely believe that it is not only normal, but highly appropriate, to hit their kids, from an early age. It is but one contributing factor to the violence that seems to permeate the disadvantaged black culture. It is consistent with the violent narrative that continues to dog them since slavery. And you cannot tell them otherwise. It is a deeply rooted and held child rearing belief. It’s sad, and part of the cycle of beliefs and behaviors that keeps them where they are – a permanent underclass.
* in the end, she didnt bring enough to the table. When on TV, she should have came out as a male transgender homeless crack addict trying to raise his/her son by themselves. Then, the White House would have given her an award and the reality TV gig would have materialized.
* The math confuses me. Less than six months ago she was given $25,000 outright. She has made numerous appearances and given interviews for which she has been paid. Now she’s on the verge of eviction, even though she has a job?
* Watching a brand new CVS be looted and burned is not exactly a chamber of commerce moment.
