Both bitter and sweet: Mothers In Charge celebrates 20 years of helping those who have lost a child to gun violence

Philadelphia has had more than 7,250 homicides since Mothers In Charge first opened its doors and that number ticks up daily.

This means tens of thousands of survivors are grieving the murder of a loved one and are quietly suffering from the anxiety, depression, fear, and anger that goes along with it.

On May 24 the nonprofit organization will host a gala to celebrate its 20th anniversary advocating for those whose lives have come undone in the wake of homicide.

“I remember we had that first meeting in 2003 at Zion Baptist Church,” said Dorothy Johnson-Speight, the group’s founder and executive director. “Their multipurpose room was packed with women.”

Today Mothers In Charge has grown from a grassroots response to gun violence into a nationally recognized violence prevention, education, and intervention organization — with chapters in California, Missouri, and New York. Johnson-Speight said they serve more than 500 youth and families annually. But her annual budget of about $550,000 and staff of 10 is still inadequate for dealing with the number of families impacted by murders each year.

Johnson-Speight understands all too well the help women need.

On the night of Dec. 6, 2001, her first-born child and only son Khaaliq Jabbar Johnson, 24, a middle school therapeutic support worker, was murdered over a parking dispute. Like so many of the mothers she now counsels, her own life too seemed to end that day. She thought that Khaaliq was in the clear because he had turned 24 that June. “I was happy because the stats said if [a Black man] lives to 24, they’re good. That December he died.”

It wasn’t Johnson-Speight’s first brush with tragedy.

"I came and found exactly what I had hope I would find.”

Both her parents died within months of one another, leaving her an orphan at 15. When her daughter died of bacterial meningitis at 2 and a half years old, her pediatrician suggested she join the grief support group Compassionate Friends. Later, she started the organization’s first African American chapter in Philadelphia.

But when her son was killed, the nightmare of traumatic grief overwhelmed Johnson-Speight, who struggled to find a reason to continue to live.

“The emotions are sometimes unbearable. You can lose your mind,” Johnson-Speight said. While Khaaliq’s murderer was found, Johnson-Speight said dealing with the police and the courts complicated her healing process.

Creating Mothers In Charge turned out to be “her purpose in the pain.”

On a recent evening, she was running a member recruitment session and encouraging another group of women suffering with grief to join in order to also repurpose their pain. They had gathered at the organization’s headquarters at 990 Spring Garden St. and Johnson-Speight had them start the evening by sharing their worst moment.

Patricia Timms cried when she told the group of her son’s murder on Aug. 27, 2016. Nashawn Jones, 25, was fatally shot once in the back on 1700 block of Newkirk St. in North Philadelphia. No one has been accused of the murder and she hasn’t heard from homicide detectives in years. “I’m like depressed about what’s going on,” Timms said, but she plans to start coming to grief counseling.

Danyl Lee, after losing two brothers to gun violence, came to the meeting “because my heart is still hurting. I was searching for a place where someone understood my story. I came and found exactly what I had hope I would find. I don’t want to just sit and sulk but to take action.”

“The emotions are sometimes unbearable.”

Lee, a Philadelphia School District teacher, said she intentionally shares her personal gun violence story with her high school students with hopes they will be encouraged to resist the allure of the streets. “High school students go around talking about the get quick money but the don’t know the end result.”

Johnson-Speight, formerly a mental health supervisor, let each of the women tell her story, allowing their public masks of composure to slip, tears to fall, and even angry dreams of revenge to be revealed.

And then she encouraged them to get involved as a tool for emotional healing. “No one wins when there is a violent act,” Johnson-Speight said.

Yet even amid the tragic stories during the evening there were jokes and laughs.

“It took me three years to come [to Mothers in Charge] and I came in very angry. All these mothers were smiling and I thought I was in the wrong place,” said Stephanie Mobley, a longtime Mothers In Charge volunteer, but, “I wanted to be like them.”

Mobley’s only son, John Robert White, was 18 and had just graduated from Dobbins High School when he was killed in his car while waiting at a stop sign on March 13, 2007. “I never knew the real reason they murdered my son,” Mobley said. She is now raising the granddaughter he never saw.

Every week Mothers In Charge receives a list of homicide victims and the next of kin from the Philadelphia Police Department and they then do peer support visits to help the mothers. The organization also provides virtual and live grief counseling sessions, anger management classes, and mentoring for juveniles from Carson Valley Children’s Aid.

More than 300 people are expected to join in the gala festivities.

“When I think back over the 20 years, had we not been doing this work, things would have been worse. Sometimes we were doing it with little or no support and we only accomplished [something] because of faith,” Johnson-Speight said.