By Terry Allen
Texas Metro News
Lucille “Big Mama” Allen never sugar-coated life. She had that porch-side wisdom — the kind that didn’t come from books but from surviving storms, raising families, and trusting God when people weren’t kind or fair. And she’d always say, “Baby, the good in you is always better than the wrong done to you.”
That was her way of telling us: don’t let the world’s cruelty rewrite the goodness God planted in your soul.
We’ve seen this play out across generations. Think back to the Civil Rights Movement — dogs, hoses, beatings, and bombs. Yet the response wasn’t to mirror hate with hate, but to rise above it. Dr. King kept preaching love anyway. John Lewis called it “good trouble.” And everyday folks — teachers, maids, students, barbers — kept showing up with dignity intact. Their good outlasted the wrong. Their character out-shined the cruelty. And history remembers that.
Today’s world is no gentler. Turn on the news and you’re met with division, injustice, political bitterness, and people who hurt others because they can’t face their own brokenness. But Big Mama would lean in with that soft but firm voice and say, “Don’t let nobody else’s darkness dim your light. You stay you — the you God made.”
I think about my own walk — moments when I’ve been lied on, pushed aside, underestimated, or treated unfairly. Times when people’s wrongdoing almost pulled me out of my character. But Big Mama’s words would rise up:
You still have to choose your good.
Not because they deserve it, but because you do.
And we see this spirit today in communities rebuilding after violence, in families forgiving old wounds, in activists pushing for justice without losing compassion, in neighbors choosing unity over suspicion. Goodness isn’t weakness. Goodness is strategy. Goodness is strength. Goodness is survival.
Big Mama believed the good in us could outlive any wrong done to us — personal, political, or generational. And she was right. Because wrong is loud, but it burns out. Good is steady, and it endures.
So today, stand in this truth:
What they did won’t define you. But the good in you will carry you.
That’s Big Mama talking. And she never missed.
Terry Allen is an NABJ award-winning Journalist, DEI expert, PR professional, and founder of the charity – Vice President at FocusPR, Founder of City Men Cook, and Dallas Chapter President of NBPRS.org
