WALTRINA MIDDLETON'S VOICE lifts you to the highest highs with bellows of crisp spoken word. Seamlessly, her croons can plunge you down the rhythm of any blues-laced freedom song. Your heart is gripped with deep, rolling riffs of truth spoken.
Harnessing the power of pain is just one of her many spiritual gifts. Middleton is an ordained minister, activist, and artist with roots in the Gullah Geechee community in South Carolina. A self-professed country girl, she grew up in Hollywood, S.C., on the coastal Gullah Sea Island of Yonges, about 30 minutes outside of Charleston.
“It was beautiful—a swampland with dirt roads, farm, and fields,” she told Sojourners. “I made my grandparents’ hogs my pets before I realized they were actually dinner.”
It’s been a winding road on the path to self-discovery for Middleton, but she says music was there from the very beginning. “Music was central to our family,” she said. “It was an intergenerational medium that brought us together, but also rooted us in our faith.”
Her grandparents had 16 children, and all of them could sing or play an instrument. The family put together a group called the Middleton Gospel Singers that toured the local church community. “Part of the country circuit is to have some kind of gospel group,” she said. “The women in my family were the instrumentalists. I was always with my family when we would be in church all day going to these programs. The whole point was to worship God. It was just something that you did.”
Even when there wasn’t a church function or performance, Middleton says music was a part of her everyday life. “We had this big ol’ barn, and we would be in the barn sitting, rehearsing, and practicing,” she said. “Sometimes there would be a fire; sometimes people would just come, listen, and talk. While they were rehearsing, we would sit out there and eat crab.”
At these family gatherings, her artistic flair began to take shape. She admired her older cousins and says they heavily influenced her style. “They had this depth to them that I couldn’t describe,” she said. “It was very low and lamenting. I found myself trying to imitate their style. It also taught me that worship could also be lamenting.”
There was something powerful about lament that Middleton was drawn to. Artists such as Nina Simone and James Baldwin showed her that the expression of pain can be a deeply moving and spiritually renewing experience. She says it is a necessity for her.
“There are people going through pain and suffering; everything is knocked out of them; they can’t even cry out,” she said. “Who will cry for them? Who will cry with them? My lamentation is to help people understand that we are interconnected. And that for the suffering of one it is my responsibility to cry out.”
MIDDLETON FELT the ministry of shared suffering and the expression of pain was definitely a calling. By the time she reached high school, she had perfected the presentation of a Langston Hughes poem, “The Negro Mother.” It was there that she met influential teachers, Ms. Singleton and Mr. Ackrum, who helped to develop her oratory skills.
“[Ms. Singleton] helped me with the whole theatrics of telling the story beyond words, with your body,” she said. “[Mr. Ackrum] taught me I couldn’t do the interpretation with my body if I couldn’t comprehend what I was saying. He taught me to understand the message in a more profound way.”
In terms of spoken-word performances, Middleton describes herself as a storyteller, not a poet. Her self-identification as a professional artist is a recent development. She attended Howard University, where she majored in political science and theater. She received a master’s in nonprofit management with an emphasis in global studies from DePaul University and a Master of Divinity at Chicago Theological Seminary, and worked as national youth advocacy director for the United Church of Christ. Most recently, Middleton was associate dean at Howard’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel and is currently expanding her independent global ministry endeavors.
Her work as a minister and activist is rich with accomplishments. She has traveled widely, raising awareness on justice issues and being present with devastated communities. She spent time in Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown; organized vigils in Cleveland (where she was living at the time) after 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot by police; walked through the streets of favelas pouring libations for slain children with the Mothers of May in Brazil; and spent time with the Native American Lakota community during its fight against the Dakota Access pipeline.
In 2016, she was invited to speak at the World Council of Churches on behalf of her family regarding the murder of her cousin DePayne Middleton, one of nine people killed by Dylann Roof in the Charleston, S.C. church shooting in 2015. “No one deserves to die that way,” she said. “It’s something I don’t think I will ever get over or understand.”
With the death of her cousin, she found herself in a different place as a minister and advocate. “There was a moment when I got home and saw these fellow activists, and all I could do was cry,” she said. “This was the first time that I wasn’t walking with the family, but was the family. This was the first time I wasn’t just lamenting someone’s suffering, but was sitting on the mourners’ bench.”
DePayne was one of the most influential of her older cousins. She recalls memories of DePayne helping her with her hair the night before the first day of high school and going shopping with her for her first bra. “She was just a really beautiful person,” Middleton said. “Her life was God, family, and ministry. Everything she did, I knew that I was going to do the same thing. She had an old soul and was always the voice of reason.”
A lot of the media blitz that surrounded the Charleston church shooting showed the families of the slain expressing the Christian value of forgiveness for Roof. However, Middleton says there was more to the story. There were extensive family ties for each individual killed—many lives affected by each death—as well as a full spectrum of emotions. Forgiveness was not the only or most prominent sentiment. She says it was frustrating trying to be authentically heard.
“No matter how many times I spoke to journalists, they would listen but they would not speak the truth,” she said. “Media will look for their Cinderella story. Don’t harm my family and our efforts to seek justice because you need a pretty headline. And it’s not even just your headline. It’s protecting your interests as well.”
SINCE THE DEATH of her cousin, Middleton has connected to activism and the narrative around suffering in a new way. Her work is even more difficult. “Living is hard,” she said. “Seeing all these murders messes with your psyche. I have to go through a ritual every morning, without exaggeration, to get out of bed—to put one foot in front of the other.”
To cope with her own suffering, she unapologetically uses lament as a healing tool and spiritual discipline. “I don’t stop myself from crying,” she said. “I probably cry on most days, and if I don’t cry I just go with it. Every day I’m pushing to be present, to be resilient, and to believe we can win.”
She holds fast to her faith because belief sustains her. God’s divine justice is an everyday hope. “I’m not free yet,” she said. “Maybe it’s the quest for freedom and the peace that comes in that, that helps me to keep going. If this God somewhere will help me to keep pushing until my last breath, then Ase, I give thanks.”
For Middleton, strength has emerged through the bearing of life’s pain. Strength is her witness and her glory.
Jazmine Steele
Jazmine is a native of Detroit, where she spent four years covering arts, culture, and her own creative take on community news, The Good News Banter Show.
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