Our nation sets aside the second Sunday in May to honor the mothers of America. Like so many others, I spent this past Sunday reflecting on the love and sacrifices of the women who do so much to hold our families together, to care for and nurture us. At the same time, I can’t help but feel sorrow for the many challenges facing mothers struggling to raise children in a country and world divided by war and poverty and inequity.

In America, those challenges are especially prevalent among women of color, who face the worst outcomes by far when it comes to health care, infant mortality and childbirth, not to mention equal pay and equitable promotion for those who work outside the home.

While we hold up Black mothers as our beacon of strength, we cannot ignore our responsibility to translate that love and respect into policies befitting the role mothers play in society. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley captured that sentiment in a powerful speech delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in the leadup to Mother’s Day. In her address, our history-making federal legislator makes an emotional appeal to back up our love for mothers with action and not just accolades — or, as she says, quoting her grandfather, she’d rather “see a sermon than hear one.”

There is no better way to honor our mothers than to take Ayanna’s message to heart. Below is her speech in full. It deserves a hearty “amen” from us all.

— Ronald Mitchell, publisher and editor, Bay State Banner