On May 31, 2025, the Incarcerated Womxn’s Clemency and Support Project (IWCSP) and Kwaneta Harris Defense Campaign hosted a webinar entitled “Mothering Behind Bars: Voices of Incarcerated Mothers in Reflection of Mother’s Day.
IWCSP is a Virginia-based collective of prison abolitionists working for the release of womxn, trans, and nonbinary people incarcerated in Virginia through pardons, parole and sentence commutations and offering various forms of community-based care and support. Founder Uhuru Rowe introduced the “Mothering Behind Bars” event, and both the audio and transcript of his remarks are included below.
The featured speakers were two Black incarcerated mothers, Kwaneta and Cynthia. Due to the wifi being out at the prison where Kwaneta is incarcerated, she was unable to join the event live. However, she has since shared written remarks which she took great time and care to prepare.
Additionally, Cynthia’s remarks were summarized by a comrade in light of technical challenges with connecting her phone call to the webinar. You can support Cynthia by signing the online petition urging Governor Glenn Youngkin to grant her clemency.
Transcript (Uhuru’s Opening Remarks)
V (Kwaneta’s assistant): Hello everybody! Thank you so much for attending today’s webinar called “Mothering Behind Bars,” where two women – Kwaneta and Cynthia – will speak about their experiences with mothering and caregiving while incarcerated.
Today we have Uhuru on the line to introduce us and also offer a few questions. Uhuru, are you there? Would you like to go ahead and get us started?
Uhuru Rowe: Yes, I’m here. Peace and solidarity to everyone in attendance at this “Mothering Behind Bars” event. For those who don’t know me, my name is Uhuru Rowe. Spell my first name U-H-U-R-U , last name R-O-W-E, and I’m a 48-year-old cis Black man who has been in prison in Virginia for over 30 consecutive years.
Three months past my 18th birthday, I was sent to prison to serve what’s commonly called a “death-by-incarceration” sentence of 93 years without parole. And after a successful freedom campaign that was spearheaded by the Justice for Uhuru Coordinating Committee – which is made up of friends and comrades – my sentence was commuted in 2022 by former Virginia governor Ralph Northam.
I’m now scheduled to be released in a little under four months from now. After my sentence was commuted, I had an idea to create a platform to elevate the voices and advocate for the freedom of incarcerated women. And out of that idea, the Incarcerated Womxn’s Clemency and Support Project was formed with the support of many other people who worked on my freedom campaign.
So those of you in attendance might be asking: why incarcerated women? Why the focus on supporting and freeing incarcerated women? So, although the prison population as you know at the state and federal level is majority men, I was wondering if you knew that the rate of incarceration for women has actually been twice of that of incarcerated men since 1980. That is because between 1980 and 2021, the total number of incarcerated women in local jails, state and federal prisons rose by a total of 525 percent. With 2015 seeing record-breaking numbers with well over 200,000 women incarcerated in the US. Which of course made the US the number one incarcerator of women in the world. More than China and Russia combined.
And about 60 percent of these incarcerated women are mothers and were the sole or primary caretaker of their children prior to being incarcerated. And you will be hearing from two incarcerated Black mothers by the name of Kwaneta and Cynthia, and they will be answering some of the following questions:
For instance, what are some of the conditions that women in prison are commonly subjected to that most on the outside might not be aware of? And what are some of the ways that incarcerated women have challenged and resisted those conditions?
Have they been able to maintain a relationship with their children and grandchildren since they have been in prison?
What are some of the ways the prison system intentionally makes it difficult for incarcerated mothers to maintain and nurture a relationship with their children and grandchildren? What are some of the strategies and practices have incarcerated mothers used in order to overcome those difficulties in order to maintain a relationship with their children and grandchildren?
What reforms and changes need to happen within the prison system in order to make it easier for incarcerated mothers to maintain and nurture relationships with their children and grandchildren?
Do you think that Mother’s Day should be used as an opportunity to highlight the struggles of incarcerated mothers and the difficulties of maintaining and nurturing relationships with their children and grandchildren and why?
How can people stay abreast of your work and support your freedom campaign? Like maybe going to a website, social media, or online petition.
It is hoped that the answers to these questions as well as other questions that will be asked will give you a better idea of the plight and struggle of incarcerated mothers and incarcerated women in general. And how they can be supported.
The great Assata Shakur once said that Black people will never be free unless Black women participate in every aspect of our struggle, on every level of our struggle. So we can take Assata’s words to the next logical extension and say that the prison reform and prison abolition movements will never be as effective and successful as they can be until they become more inclusive of the voices, the ideas, the experiences, and the strategies of incarcerated women and mothers like Kwaneta and Cynthia.
So if you want to stay abreast of my work – I’m going to keep my time short because I want the majority of the focus and attention to be on both Kwaneta and Cynthia – you can log onto my LinkTree (Justice for Uhuru) to see how you can support my reentry efforts. And I’m very excited for this opportunity that this will provide for the two people who will be speaking today. Thanks for attending and thanks for listening. Peace.
Kwaneta’s Written Remarks
Good evening. First, I want to thank you for giving me the space to speak today — not just as an incarcerated woman, not just as a number, but as a mother. As someone who has been sitting in a cell since 2007, I have often wondered if the world still remembers that we, too, are women of blood and bone and heart. We’re not only survivors of a system, but givers of life, stewards of families, and keepers of generations. I want to talk to you tonight about mothering. Not in the way it’s often neatly wrapped and displayed on greeting cards or sitcoms. But mothering as I have lived it—fractured, reimagined, painful, and sacred.
Mothering While Incarcerated
Mothering while incarcerated is like trying to parent through a fogged-up glass window. I can see my children, sometimes. In letters. In memories. On the two rare occasions I’ve been able to hold them since 2007. But I can’t touch them. I can’t kiss a scraped knee or pack a school lunch or whisper bedtime stories. The prison system strips you of every intimate ritual of motherhood. I have had to learn to parent through prayers and hope. I write letters that go unanswered for months. I dream about their lives more than I live them. The hardest part is the silence — when I don’t know if they’re safe, if they’re fed, if they’re even thinking of me. There are no mother-daughter brunches here. No family game nights. Just the aching weight of a love that doesn’t go away, even when you are told you no longer have a place in your children’s lives.
My Son Had Me for Thirteen Years
My son had me for thirteen years. My oldest daughter had me for five. My youngest? Just four months. Can you imagine that? Four months. A whole life reduced to a single season of memory. I didn’t get to know her laugh, or the way her eyes look when she’s scared, or how she likes her hair done. My son remembers the real me. The before. We have a different relationship, one forged in the rituals of ordinary life. I was there for his scraped knees and spelling tests. That time we danced in the kitchen. He knows who I was, not just what I’ve become. But even that relationship has changed. Time corrodes even the strongest ties. I’ve only seen my children twice since 2007. I miss their birthdays every year. Their graduations, their heartbreaks, the moments that matter. I’ve missed entire chapters of their lives, and that absence, that longing—it haunts me.
Being a Daughter from Prison
Now let me tell you what it feels like to be a daughter from here. My mother is aging in Michigan while I sit here in Texas. Thousands of miles, thousands of regrets. I am her only child. Her only hope for care. And yet, she is the one who carries me now. My 17-year-old daughter, who should be off finding her own future, is anchored to care for her grandmother because I am not there to fulfill the duty that is mine. My baby girl had to stay in-state for college, not because she wanted to, but because she had to.
That guilt? It doesn’t sleep. I should be helping with prescriptions, appointments, loneliness. But I’m locked in a place where I can’t even hold my mother’s hand. I can't run errands or argue over doctor’s orders. I can't protect my daughter from becoming a caregiver too soon. I am stuck between two generations that need me, and I can serve neither the way I want. That kind of helplessness changes you.
A Nurse’s Heart Behind Bars
Before all of this, I was a nurse. I’ve seen life begin and end. I’ve held people through suffering, celebrated healing, and sat with the dying. Nursing, at its core, is mothering. It is seeing pain and answering it with presence. When I got locked up, I thought I’d lost that part of myself. But nursing didn’t leave me. It’s how I cope. It’s how I survive. Even behind bars, I care. I listen. I tend to the emotional wounds others ignore. Sometimes the women here just need someone to believe them, to say, “You’re not crazy.” Sometimes they need Tylenol. Sometimes they just need to cry without being punished. Being a nurse in here isn’t about scrubs or stethoscopes. It’s about showing up.
Mothering Each Other Inside
Yes. The care work I do in here is absolutely mothering. It’s not biological, but it is deeply maternal. I sit with women when they find out their child died and they couldn’t go to the funeral. I braid hair for court dates. I help someone write their first letter to a daughter they haven’t spoken to in ten years. I share my commissary when someone is going through. This is a community of wounded women, and we mother each other the best we can. Not because it’s easy, but because no one else will.
We share everything — from toothpaste to trauma. This care work is needed because the system won’t do it. The prison doesn’t ask how you’re doing. It asks if you’re complying. But women ask. Women see. Women care. Mothering in here is interdependent. It is survival. It is resistance. It is the radical act of saying: You still matter. You are still loved.
So yes, I am a mother. Still. Always.
Even from behind bars.
Even across miles.
Even in silence.
Mothering does not stop because a judge hands down a sentence. It may change form — become a whisper, a prayer, a letter — but it does not end.
To all the women like me, who carry both their babies and their regrets, who fight to stay human in a place built to erase them —I see you. I am you.
And to the world outside: don’t forget us. Not just because we deserve to be remembered, but because our children do.
Thank you.
