Reclaiming Their Time: International Hip-Hop impresario and In Her Voice promoter, Napoleon Maddox, discusses how his ancestors curated lively lives that mattered then, and now.

Through oral history retold to him by family, Napoleon Maddox knew about his great grand aunts by the time he began to recite the alphabet. Conjoined twins Millie-Christine McKoy of Whiteville, North Carolina used their agency during a time when women could not vote, and Black U.S. citizens were considered three-fifths of a human by a clause written into the Constitution in 1787. By proclaiming the wholeness of their bodies, the sisters redirected the trajectory of their lives in such a way that even after their deaths at 61 in 1912, their impact is indelible a century later.

“We’re inclined to think of fighting and being radical as a fist up,” says Maddox. “I see their resistance as one that was very spiritual and psychological, them knowing very deeply who they are, and how they declared that they were children of God. That they were creation and not freaks.”

In an act of resistance, they changed the spelling of their surname, replacing the “C” in McCoy with a “K” so that they wouldn’t carry their slave master’s last name. After being forced to work in circuses and sideshows since childhood, after slavery, they made a living singing and dancing, billed as “The Carolina Twins” and “The Eighth Wonder of the World” and owned property in New York.  According to Maddox, people of Whiteville still talk of the twins, who have a road named after them in honor of their celebrity.

On a quest to learn more about the lives of his great grand aunts, Maddox visited their hometown and learned firsthand from a distant cousin about how highly the twins were regarded. His multimedia stage show in dedication to the McKoy twins, Twice the First Time, toured Italy and France and comes to Cincinnati on May 15 at The Woodward Theatre.

Why Napoleon feels Black women’s voices need to be heard:

Black women need to be heard, deserve to be heard. There’s always so much wisdom and power. Black women have so much to offer to the world and this country, and ironically, what they have to offer is taken on the terms of the dominant culture.

Words that come to mind when Napoleon thinks of Black women:

Always a sister, strength, soul and humor.

Ways that people can be more supportive to Black women:

By acknowledging Black women’s humanity. The whole idea that a black woman’s threshold for pain is higher than other ethnicities…and whether it is or not, it’s problematic that they would want to consider that—like what about my care, not my ability to endure what nobody else would have to endure.

Napoleon Maddox is a co-organizer and promoter of the In Her Voice Concert on May 16, hosted by Queens Village and Underworld Jazz Fest at the Woodward Theatre. Featured performers include: Tank & the Bangas, Lauren Eylise, Jennifer Simone, MC Jori An Cotton & DJ Apryl Reign along with the premiere of Because We Love Her: Love Letters to Black Women Video & Poetry by In Her Voice North College Hill Poetry Crew.

Article by Mildred Fallen