Why I Decided to Name My Houseplants After Lesser-Known Heroes in Black History

Of all my plants, I am partial to Jo Ann Robinson. The angel wing begonia blooms pink in the winter and red in the summer and has grown so big I’ve had to re-pot her twice. This plant’s beauty and strength make her seem a fitting match for the civil rights activist who laid the ground for the Montgomery bus boycott six years before Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat, and for whom she is named.

W.C. Handy comes in second. The monstera deliciosa has been extremely moody as the seasons have changed. I’m so proud I’ve found a spot where the light and humidity (supplemented by daily spritzing) are good enough to make him happy. What more can you expect from the “Father of the Blues”?

I started my collection of house plants from scratch in 2020, and the collection has since become a memorial to honor lesser-known people in Black history. 

The idea was, ahem, planted when I went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in 2021. It was Juneteeth, and my first year living in this southern city where every corner oozes Black history. This was after the COVID-19 vaccine became widely available and before the Delta variant emerged — a period I refer to as the “Hope Times.” A friend was in town, my first visitor since I’d moved from California to Alabama in the fall of 2020. 

The museum features striking photographs and exhibits highlighting moments in a decades-long struggle for voting rights and integration. Next to a statue of Rosa Parks was a plaque recognizing six of the lesser-known women who paved the way for the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott’s success: Aurelia Browder, Johnnie Carr, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald, Jo Ann Robinson, and Mary Louise Smith. These names were all unfamiliar to me.

Even after my friend and I left the museum, we kept talking about those ladies. As I drove my friend around town showing her the sites, I asked her to read aloud the bios of these badass women. Colvin was only 15 when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, nine months before Parks. Browder, a seamstress and widowed mother of six, was arrested a month after Colvin. McDonald was a widow in her 70s when she was arrested. All three were plaintiffs in the case that outlawed segregated seating on Montgomery buses.

Such amazing stories! I wanted to do something to remember these women and their legacies. 

Around this same time, I was also starting to deeply nest into my apartment in Birmingham. I’d spent most of my adult life living in cramped California one-bedrooms that didn’t have enough space or natural light for me to realize my plant mom dreams. So when I moved to Birmingham — and got a place that was twice as big for half of the rent, and equipped with lots of windows and a balcony — I decided to go all out on the greenery. As I started to bond with my new plants, I knew I had to name them. And it was obvious to me where those names should come from.

Among the plants I already had, the naming was easy. Claudette Colvin went to my sprightly fiddle leaf fig; Aurelia Browder went to my Ti leaf, which has pink stems and striations that imbue it with a maternal warmth; and Susie McDonald went to my bold and bright neon pothos.

Then I kept going. Aside from those original icons, I’ve added lots of others. I don’t name my plants right away; I spend some time with them to see what name fits. 

Sometimes I get ideas from documentaries or podcasts. Jesse Belvin, a musician who played the first integrated concert in Little Rock, Arkansas and was then killed in a car crash, was mentioned in a documentary on Sam Cooke that I recently watched. I gave his name to my ZZ plant. When I learned about Constance Baker Motley, a civil rights advocate who wrote the original complaint in Brown v. The Board of Education, on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” I knew that was the perfect moniker for a damaged begonia I have that is slowly coming back to life. They are both fighters.

But most of the names I choose come to me through obituaries that cross my newsfeed. That was the case for both Lani Guinier (satin pothos), a legal scholar, and Gloria Richardson (garden croton), a civil rights activist who was unknown to me even though she is from my home state of Maryland.

Some of my plant’s namesakes are still with us, like Leila Foley-Davis (money tree), the first Black woman elected mayor in the country. Oh, and my jasmine plant is named for R&B star Jazmine Sullivan, because the wordplay was too good to resist — and she’s making history with her music, so it feels right.

In the early days of my houseplant collecting, I was haphazardly throwing labeled Post-It notes on the pots to help me remember each name in my growing collection. When I recently succumbed to the omicron variant and had to quarantine at home alone, I decided to start making more refined cardstock labels that I affix with clear tape. I now make it a practice to read an article about each person and jot a few lines on the label to help me remember.

Each week when I complete my watering rituals for all 19 (for now) of my plant babies, my knowledge of these heroes grows as well. I am slowly cementing their names into my brain, and in the process my understanding of my own history as a Black woman in America expands. When I have people over — when that is eventually a thing again — I hope they will learn something, too.